Environment

   Imagine a robot that has a limited number of responses. If you say hello to it, the robot automatically reacts with: “Hi, how are you today?” If you keep greeting the robot, the repeated response would get annoying and it would not take long for you to recognise it as a machine. But say the creator programs it so that at every third time someone greets the robot, it changes its response to a second sentence: “Fine day, isn’t it?” In this case you would take longer to catch on it was a robot, but not much longer.

'It's all about green energy' - Solutions to climate change can lead to a philosophical shift in the way we develop, explains Rajendra Pachauri, winner of the Nobel peace prize and chair of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

We need a new climate philosophy, says Pachauri. Photograph: Ed Wray/AP

Rajendra Pachauri has a particular mission to bring light out of darkness. The recipient of last year’s Nobel peace prize wants to put electric lighting into the world’s 1.6bn poorest homes, which lack power. So will this increase the world’s carbon footprint? Well, no. He has developed solar powered lamps to market worldwide, including to the 64m rural homes without electricity in India. The handheld lamps will replace kerosene and can be assembled by local entrepreneurs.

We never thought we'd be promoting a program on commercial television here on Undergrowth, but then again, we never thought theyd produce a show that was so renegade. We'll, it is 2009, and there is an African American in the White House, and in case you needed more proof that the shift is in the process, then look no further. Guerilla Gardeners on Channel 10 is an entire series devoted to the illegal and clandestine culture jamming of a group of urban activists changing the world one empty lot at the time. More than that, it's pretty much a step by step guide to DIY urban renewal, complete with secret HQ meetings in an undisclosed warehouse location and how to's on sweet talking the local official so they don't bust you.  Actually, it might just be the most anarchist television program ever produced in Australia, up there with other maverick luminaries of the little screen John Safran or The Chaser, mixed with a bit of permaculture, and a spice of squat philosophy...

Permablitz: A informal gathering involving a day on which a group of at least two people come together to achieve the following:

• create or add to edible gardens where someone lives
• share skills related to permaculture and sustainable living
• build community networks
• have fun
  

Asha Bee is a community activist writing an honours thesis in food relocalisation at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia.  She coined the term 'permablitz', a contraction of permaculture backyard blitz. (Backyard Blitz is the name of popular gardening and lifestyle show in Australia involving rapid backyard makeovers).   Lou Smith of Breakdown Press interviewed Asha Bee about permablitzes & backyard food production in the face of peak oil and economic turmoil and productive ways we can rebuild community.

April 2007

On the dusty shores of Lake Sélingué, Mali, West Africa, amid mud brick huts and donkey carts, peasants, family farmers, fisherfolk, nomads, pastoralists, indigenous and forest peoples, rural workers, migrants and consumers from across the world laid down a challenge. From their many languages and regions emerged a global call for food sovereignty.