Across the Change-i-verse

by Emily Gertz

categories: Activism, Health, Humanitarian Relief, International Action, Popcult, Social Entrepreneurship, Water, Wildlife & Biodiversity

Published August 09, 2009 @ 07:12PM PT

Just a small sampling of what's been going on this past week on Change.org's blogs:

Friday Futures: Food: How might the combination of population growth, monocrop agriculture, and overfishing affect the future of food. Sustainable Food blog editor Alanna Shaikh isn't optimistic: "We'll continue to grow enough food in aggregate to support the weight of the world's population. In terms of the variety of our food, however, we're on the verge of a major contraction. Variety will shrink, and prices of food will go up enough that the even the middle class will see their food options substantially limited by price."

Also at Sustainable Food, editor Natasha Chart covers one of the major underreported natural resource stories, the growing shortage of phosphorous for fertilizer.

Twitter, Facebook Shut Down in Attempt to Silence Activist: "On Thursday and Friday millions of social media users found themselves frustrated and without access to services like Twitter and Facebook," writes Social Entrepreneurship editor Nathaniel Whittemore. "News reports soon came in that the outages were being caused by an ongoing and coordinated hacker attack. Just today, the story got even more interesting, with the New York Times reporting that the target of the attack appears to have been a single person, a 34 year old economics professor and refugee activist from the Republic of Georgia."

Fear, Sex, and Pandemic - Horrible Outcomes Don't Change Behavior: Global health equivalent of global warming's To Scare or Not To Scare? "Only a small percentage of the public will respond to the ‘useful parts' of the message and change habits," says Global Health guest blogger Carol Dunn, "All ‘call to action' messages that trigger our fear response-are not sustainable, healthy, or useful..." and several more interesting points.

Does "Cash for Clunkers" Hurt the Homeless? "In addition to stimulating the economy and promoting fuel efficiency, the "Cash for Clunkers" program may be having another unintentional effect: hurting the poor and homeless," suggests End Homelessness editor Shannon Moriarty. Vehicle donation programs, such as Mission Solano in Fairfield, California, rely on vehicle donations (in return for a tax write-off) to raise funds to serve the area's homeless."

Friday Food: Fresh and Light Pastas, Zucchini Love, Filled Pancakes, and More: Another great roundup of vegan recipes from Animal Rights editor Stephanie Ernst. And Because Sometimes We All Need a Little Bit of Adorable, she posted this cheering video as well.

Find My Happy Place (Or, Music for a Bad Day): We certainly don't have the corner on bad news here at Stop Global Warming. But it's important to re-energize. Genocide blog editor, Michelle shares a selection of music to cheer up by from her personal "Find My Happy Place" i-Pod playlist.