"Sustainability is illegal."

I find law fascinating, and I would love to write about it more.  But for this blog post, I would rather you spend your time listening to Thomas Linzey, Esq., co-founder and executive director of the Community Environmental Defense Legal Fund, which intends and works on "Building sustainable communities by assisting people to assert their right to local self-government and the rights of nature."  In the audio clip below taken from the fantastic radio show Making Contact, Linzey talks about ways to morph the current regulatory and property rights framework of environmental law to one that affords nature rights and better protects the rights of citizens in the face of ever-growing corporatization and pollution.  As it stands however, according to Linzey, "Sustainability is illegal.  The hammer comes down on you when you attempt to actually to prohibit something in the interest of building sustainability in [a] community."

Guest blog #24: Claire Whitlinger on amnesty and ecological justice

(Here are some perspectives on forgiveness from Claire, a doctoral student in sociology here at the university, continuing a recent thread of thought.)

What truth commissions can teach us about the possibilities of ecological justice: some thoughts on amnesties

In The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt makes a provocative and troubling assertion: “that men are unable to forgive what they cannot punish and they are unable to punish what has turned out to be unforgivable.”

This quotation came to mind when thinking about the steps needed to promote a peaceful and ecologically holistic world.

My interest in transitional justice stems from the time I lived in South Africa. I was fascinated by how a country having suffered decades of racial oppression could transition to democracy with relatively little violence. I began to wonder how any society could overcome such systematic oppression and violence. What could (or must) societies do to confront a past ridden with atrocities so deep and vast that no court of justice could possibly adjudicate every claim? Over the past twenty-five years, this question has been central to the emergence and professionalization of the transitional justice field – a field that has institutionalized a number of mechanisms (truth commissions and amnesties, included) to facilitate national transitions from totalitarianism and authoritarianism to democracy.

Having studied transitional justice, in general, and the global proliferation of truth commissions, in particular, my initial response to the possibility of using amnesties to address ecological injustice was one of skepticism.

So what are amnesties? Put simply, amnesties are a form of legal forgiveness. They are generally legislative or executive acts that restore a guilty person to the status of innocent.

Within the transitional justice field, amnesties are most notable for having been utilized by the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In this instance, amnesty was the result of a political compromise between then-President F.W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela. Rather than a blanket amnesty in which all perpetrators would be excused, the Amnesty Committee (one of three institutional bodies making up the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission) granted amnesties on an individual basis. In exchange for confessing their crimes, individual perpetrators could receive amnesty. Setting aside the little known fact that out of over 7,000 applications, only 849 received amnesty (roughly 12%), in the wake of the South African TRC, scholars began to debate the social utility of exchanging “truth” for “justice.” By and large, scholars and human rights practitioners came to the conclusion that amnesties were neither eliciting truth nor justice. They feared that amnesties were at the best, ineffective, and the worst, harmful for a nascent democracy.

In 2009, I attended a workshop at Stanford Law School sponsored by the International Center for Transitional Justice. The majority of participants were human rights practitioners and came from all corners of the world. Many attended to learn how to implement transitional justice mechanisms in their own country. When the issue of amnesties came up, I was surprised by how vehemently anti-amnesty the participants were. Amnesties were associated with amnesia, not truth-telling, as I had been led to believe. In fact, some deemed to be absolutely unacceptable, a threat to rule of law. They argued that democracy could not flourish without holding perpetrators legally accountable.

Given that these mechanisms, and consequently, these critiques emerged in a particular political and historical context, how then might amnesties function when pursuing ecological justice within a (largely) functioning democracy? Furthermore, what can truth commissions teach us about the possibility of granting amnesty for ecological injustice?

More thoughts tomorrow...

It's still a veil of morality

I wanted to have a specific post to respond to Matthew's thoughtful comments on my post A veil of morality. (I do not mean for this post to be attacking of him in any way, although while re-reading it, it does seem a little intense. Matthew, I hope you understand :))

The dominant form of culture of today is that of materialism guided by industrial capitalism. This approach began in Europe and eventually migrated to North America, and slowly but surely has been implemented in other countries, either out of military coercion, "nation building" (the processes through which the politics of a country or group of people are controlled by controlling their economies, modifying their environments, or making them dependent on a system not traditionally theirs. This happened significantly during the Cold War, with the US building dams in countries in Asia to control the flow of water. For more, see "Containing Communism by Impounding Rivers: American Strategic Interests and the Global Spread of High Dams in the Early Cold War," by Professor Richard Tucker, in Environmental Histories of the Cold War (2010).), or through sanctioning, soft law, or customary international law tactics. At the same time, many of the large "aid" and "development" banks, while giving people access to things they otherwise would not have had, can also be construed as mechanisms to make groups of people reliant on powerful. As Richard Nixon said in the 1968, "Let us remember that the main purpose of aid is not to help other nations but to help ourselves." 

While it may seem that I am myself patronising by saying that a pristine environment is what capitalistically, Western-defined "poor" countries should have, I believe international economic and social pressures impose primarily Western culture on people and places that have not dealt with issues of pollution or contamination before. Many of the benefits of such impositions go to those that want to continue their lifestyles and ways of being, and not to those whose land, air, and water are being degraded. (See Curse of the Black Gold here and here) Of course, any "benefits" are measured in terms of how the dominating country or economy measures them. And so, we are to industrialise this countries for what? So that those countries too can jump on the bandwagon of ecological decline and capitalistic bureaucracy that will be difficult to dismantle, only to then be able to buy back what they lost, if at all?

Wealth, as defined by the West, is absolutely not needed to establish environmental standards, particularly if a group of people or a country chooses not to participate in ecologically-degrading economies such as industrial capitalism. If one is to think of industrial capitalism, then yes, monetary wealth is likely needed to establish standards, or to at least move away from places that have been contaminated by industry. (See, for example, this post on Delray.) The issue, as it seems to me, comes down to definitions. Who defines that is "ecologically sound"? Furthermore, why does every single place on the Earth have to be marred by industrialism?

If money is used as an indicator of wealth, then yes, many colonised countries and regions are likely more monetarily rich, especially because they now participate in a globalised, capitalist economy, most likely as a peripheral economy. There are issues of power that are at play here, and I think it can be dangerous to think that countries that practice violence against their own people and their own land can be any more altruistic to the people and land of other parts of the world. I also disagree with the statement that technology is what we need to adapt to a changing environment. This can easily turn into an argument for the continued investment in a way of thinking that has put us in the current ecological crisis in the first place. Technological development, and its drivers, have fundamentally not changed at all since the so-called "Enlightenment." (part of my dissertation)

I think we absolutely must envision a fundamentally different world. If we are so used to living longer and longer, with more and more perks, more and more decadence, then we will surely accelerate toward the cliff of ecological collapse. The standards of living that we have are decidedly not sustainable. The only ways of living that have proven to be sustainable over long enough periods of time are/were those of pre-agriculturalists and semi-nomads. Industrial capitalism, tradeoffs, neoliberalism, trade in waste and trash is just one way of being in the world. There are others. 

"A long life isn't necessarily a good life, but a good life might be long enough."

~Tony, the homeless man that stands at the intersection of Main and Liberty, featured here.

"Going green, but getting nowhere"

I borrowed today's post title from a New York Times op-ed contribution with the same title, written by Gernot Wagner, an economist at the Environmental Defense Fund. (Thank you, Colin, for sending this article to me.) The article makes for an interesting read, but it raises several issues of individualism and collective action that I do not agree with, since they stem from an old mindset of large-scale regulation driven by neoliberal economics, the same economics that has gotten us into this mess.

I agree with Wagner's sentiment on the importance and need for collective action. Of course we need collective action in the face of collectively-made problems. But Wagner almost belittles individual effort, because, it doesn't affect change. He writes,

"But, sadly, individual action does not work. It distracts us from the need for collective action, and it doesn’t add up to enough. Self-interest, not self-sacrifice, is what induces noticeable change. Only the right economic policies will enable us as individuals to be guided by self-interest and still do the right thing for the planet."

I do not agree with him. He is saying that the agency for change is not us, that individuals have no agency, but rather economic policies are what will free us from ourselves. Unfortunately, the economic system that is vague and murky, the policy of which is set by economic wonks in secrecy (look at the Federal Reserve). I agree that individual action doesn't add up when we are not communicative of our efforts, when we are not consciously trying to instill change in others. Of course it wouldn't work, because such individual action is almost selfish and elitist. I have mentioned this several times.

"And economics teaches us that humanity must have the right incentives if it is to stop this terrible trend."

Wagner implies with this statement that humans are "rational" actors, and act rationally when shown a price of their choices. Nothing could be further from the truth, because no one really acts rationally. Look at how many people smoke, and how many eat unhealthily, how many people continue to buy Hummers even when gas "prices" are so high. Furthermore, the costs for environmental compliance are terribly low. Many factories find it cheaper to pay fines for breaking regulations than upping their standards and complying. The boundaries between domestic law and transnational law further provide little incentive to think about cumulative impacts of choices. Law and economy are set up with loopholes - you can prove your case not to pay, or be luckily powerful, or just pay your way out of your problems.

Wagner raises how economic incentives allowed us to get rid of lead from gasoline. But the economy didn't stop us from creating another problem. The economy is not self-correcting, and our faith in it cannot be blind. The reason why all of these problems keep arising is because we have a structure in place that allows them to pop up. As soon as the "problem" of climate change is "solved," something else massive will come up. I know it. Because unless we change the foundation, the offspring are all rotten.

What such articles have the tendency to do is put the burden on the governing elite. But as President Obama said tonight, we all have responsibilities. I have continued to believe in the ability of human emotion and benevolence. Constantly we are surrounded by stories and images and media that tell us stories that are inspiring, not because a price is put on their actions, but because they speak to something deeper, something that is more powerful than rational action and choice. We are guided ethically and emotionally as individuals, so why should we be guided by "rational market principles" that in no way question the status quo? Aren't we more than that? I am not convinced that we are. We are animals, and we have a conscience. It is for that reason we find things beautiful, and some things despicable. Unfortunately, right now, such emotion shows up only when we are manifestly and tangibly distressed, when we actually see something going wrong in front of us.

As individuals, we cannot act in isolation. Rather, we must recognise that we are a part of a community - of people, of species, of ecosystems - forming this Earth. A restructuring of our lives, individual and collective, is in order.

"In being forced to do what is right...

men lose the dignity of being right." ~Wendell Berry

Laura Smith and I were talking last night after a long and thoughtful day in Detroit. Laura is a PhD student in architecture and environmental psychology, and is an interior designer, too. We talked about environmentalism, ethics, and personal motivation. Laura knows a lot about personal motivators for action related to the environment. She said that the two biggest drivers for positive environmental feelings are time in nature, and having a role model to look up to. Of course, what are not motivators for people to change their behaviour are policies, governmental or private, that are enforced top-down, particularly because most all of these policies are based on incentives (here, here, here, here), which don't convince people that the flaw is something deeper than where they choose to spend money, or something like that.

But what may be more of a barrier is the forcefulness associated with policies and law. In no way am I saying that environmental law is not necessary, but the pride of individuals rests in their ability to make choices for themselves. An apt example is the raising of kids, particularly in their teenage years. Deep down, most parents do know what is best for their kids, and they do tell their kids what to do and what not to do. But in being told what to do, there is almost an automatic reaction on the teenager's part not to listen to advice or orders, even though it is in their best interest to listen. That begs the question, How is it that we may have a world in what people choose to do themselves is what is the right thing to do? I know some might think that "right" is a subjective word, and there may be many "rights." Yet, it is clear that most all ecological and social harm has arisen from people doing the "right" thing, be it for themselves or their families. When I say "right" choices, I mean choices that respect and dignify not only people's immediate families (other people), but others (including nature), too.

This drives at a fundamental ethic in which tradeoffs, something I will write about in a day or two, are a thing of the past. Of course, a changed education stemming from a changed ethic seems like a way in which minds can be shaped from the very beginning. There would be no need for laws governing the sanctity of a river or of the air. What this necessarily results in is a reduced goverment, a reduced oversight, and a reduced need to be forced to do something. These are all things that all of us can agree are good.

FRACK YOU - Innocent until proven guilty

There a couple of themes from previous posts I'd like to pull together with this post, namely proactive law, the precautionary principle. I just read another article in Orion about fracking, When Cowboys Cry, by Sandra Steingraber, in which she talks about the continuing efforts of oil and gas extraction companies, like Halliburton, Chevron, and Exxon to frack in places like plains of Montana, the south of France, the vales of England, and the forests of Poland. More disturbing, however, is the part when she writes,

That was the week that stories about fracking broke in the international press, and the European environmentalists were scrambling to figure out what laws in the European Union might apply to this new technology. Like the sons and daughters of Montana's cowboys, the sons and daughters of the Allied Forces were having a hard time finding legal traction.

The British journal The Ecologist reached a similar conclusion in an investigative report about the European plans of Halliburton, Chevron, and Exxon and others. Although fracking in the United States is linked to toxic pollution and social conflict, notes The Ecologist, the technology is being rapidly exported. Fracking "exceeds the government regulatory process." It is "set to continue." It is, perhaps, "too powerful to oppose."

My former lab mate Paul, who graduated just last week, and I would talk many times about socio-environmental issues. He always has insightful things to say, and he said one thing that put a different perspective on things I've written about previously (here, here), including trust and faith in large organisations such as government and corporations, I believe on the day of the one year anniversary of the BP-Macondo well blowout and oil spill. He said, with regard large companies and corporations, "The companies are innocent until proven guilty." This statement puts a twist on a commonly held legal dictum, particularly because companies are not just "potential" criminals - they have been implicated and proven guilty time and time again. Each time, they have paid a small fine, and have moved on to commit the next crime. These companies are serial criminals, manic criminals. The statement also lends credence to how the precautionary principle operates in our society today - it is not that a law is implemented if a bad socio-environmental outcome is possible; rather a law is not implemented if it maybe possible to hurt the profits of companies. Society and environment be damned.

It is clear that regardless of the future applicability of retrospective law, those with power have the ability to subvert the law. Indeed, it doesn't matter what the sentiment of the law is, loopholes in law are treated as not an overlook in the law, not a space in which the sentiment of the law can pervade, but rather a space within which detrimental activities we thought would be regulated against can operate freely and without conscience. It is as if the outcome is not criminal or regulated against, but rather the mode of crime. This is contradictory to how the law operates in other (related) arenas. When someone commits first degree murder, it doesn't matter how the murder was committed, but what is important that the crime occurred. There is no legal loophole that says, "Oh, you used a stone to commit the crime rather than a gun. You're okay. You're free." But with ecological degradation, it is not the first degree crime that is illegal, rather it is just the manners in which the crime is commited that are deemed to be acceptable or not. There is then a legal discrepancy, a cultural schizophrenia, that is obvious.

What might be an approach to prevent this from happening, given the legal system we have? I heard a provocative Speaking of Faith episode from a few years ago, Reflections on the Death Penalty in America, in which a guest said that we must look into laws that maintain the dignity of humans. This can be easily extended to the environment. Rather than have a legalistic framework that is full of loopholes, why not have a legal framework that is inherently holistic and inherently proactive. Given the arguments made for and against even well-worded laws, why not have debates on the heart of the problems?

On rights, conveniences and obligations

I want to continue my thoughts from my last post on obligation. I particularly want to focus on the obligations that we must assume given our rights and conveniences in this world.

I am no expert of history, and no expert of international affairs. I know little of the governance structures that exist in many parts of the world. Yet it is is undeniable, to me at least, that as time has moved on in our societies, the rights granted to people by their governments have on the whole increased. (Libertarians may not think so.) Women have the right to vote in most parts of the world now, and much of the world has adopted some form of democracy. The list of human rights has increased over time, it seems, and for good reason. I find it difficult to comprehend and swallow the many violations against the sanctity of the world propagated through war and similar crimes. Increasingly, rights have the character such that they are applicable to all people living in a jurisdiction, and that is an absolutely wonderful thing. These are rights that confer upon all of us the access and ability to partake governance, which affects our daily lives. (Many of us do not exercise these rights, but that is a different story.) At the same time, we have had a proliferation of "convenience" in our lives. We have made it a priority for ourselves to make convenience more convenient, to give more and more people more and more access to more and more things. We have become so accustomed to convenience that we think it a human right to have access to these conveniences. In fact, many people have said that access to the the internet has become a fundamental human right. 

The right to open a business that violently extracts natural resources exists for all of us, and although there are laws such as NEPA that do require us to "consider" the environmental impacts, the environment has been continuously degraded over time. In fact, as long as there is a "just" compensation to the affected people for pollution and environmental harm, such activities can go on. Our legal system is set up such that we have obligations to people, but no obligations to the water they drink, or to the land they stand on, or to the air they breathe. As long as the impacts of our actions can be monetised to a value that other people accept, those impacts can be made to occur. Given extremely toxic amounts of pollution, people may reach a settlement and leave to find a new home. But what about the old home? What about the river in which was dumped PCBs? Our right to compensation has come at the expense of the environment. Many of our rights and conveniences have come with increasing detriment to the environment.

As we have moved through time, we have continued to provide others with proxies to provide us the basic necessities of life - our rights and increasingly our conveniences. As the number of these proxies has increased, we have lost our connections with the elements that provide for us and sustain us. These proxies have been provided to the government and companies, and we feel that their only job is to serve us and to secure our rights and conveniences. Yet I do not believe that the list of our obligations, as citizens, has grown in proportion with the list of our rights and our conveniences. The right to vote has not come with the obligation to vote, at least in the US. No one can deny that the convenience of a new laptop is benign on the environment, regardless of whether or not we feel it is a human right to have access to the internet, and still we have no obligation to make sure it isn't harming people before we buy it, or after we are done using it. As I wrote a couple of days ago, our increased mental and emotional capacities place on us the burden of obligation. We must expand the scope of our obligations with every increasing right, with every increasing convenience. Rights exists only because there is land beneath our feet, water to drink and air to breath. Conveniences only exist because nature provides us the materials for them. Obligations will allow us to fully realise the impacts of these rights and conveniences.

On the deficiencies of the law

I continue to seek to motivate individual action. Yesterday, I came across the notion of proactive law, which is a growing school of thought, particularly in the European Union. Proactive law is "a future-oriented approach where the goal is to promote what is desirable and ex ante maximise opportunities while minimising problems and risks." This philosophy of law has, it seems, primarily been applied to creating a better business environment for people, such that "an optimal mix of regulatory means...best promote(s) societal objectives..." But it may not be terribly difficult to think about proactive law in the context of environmental law - given that we know there are environmental problems created by the way society functions, we may be able to pass enforceable legislation such that environmental harm is minimised through future societal actions. (There are of course issues with developing a dialogue with nature itself, unless people try to represent the views of nature.) Most environmental laws have been retrospective, setting legal boundaries of action because of past environmental harm. However, these laws do potentially grant authority to regulate future behaviour of people and businesses, just like the Clean Air Act (first adopted in 1970) was judged to be applicable to regulate greenhouse gas emissions a couple of years ago.

There seems to be an inherent contradiction between future-oriented law and the way humans have been behaving so far, because humans will likely continue to behave in the same way in the future. But with our behaviour, we have created over the past few hundred years a society whose understanding of its actions cannot be fully comprehended right now, and may never be. For example, what does it mean for our human relationships that we now have new forms communication that inherently limit time with other people? Such a question is hard to wrap our minds around, and we will not know the full consequences of such a change in momentum until many years have gone by. So how might we be able to create laws that bind us to a desired future outcome? Furthermore, the interesting thing about law is that it is made in the context of its time, given our sensibility of the issues facing us - the US Constitution was drafted in the late 18th century, and many of us know that there are significant issues surrounding the interpretation and validity of the Second Amendment today, which was adopted in 1791.

I write about this, because as I mentioned previously, the sentiments behind the law come out of the weaving of our collective moralities - in the end, the law may lose the force that a few of us might want it to have. But it is clear that personal actions now, in the present, can guarantee that at least our individual exoneration from the behaviour that may degrade the environment or trample on social justice now and in the future. We may never understand the outcomes of our actions given the complex web of interconnectedness today, but choosing not to participate in such behaviour guarantees that at least for us, such proactive law is superfluous and unnecessary.

On the law and being retrospective

This post ties back to my post from yesterday about risk. I found out today that the US EPA is going to now try to write regulations for new toxic chemicals, such as perchlorate, that have now been found in water supplies around the nation. (I never really knew how toxic rocket propellants were until I learned about them in my propulsion classes, and a few classes on explosions, explosives, propellants and pyrotechnics. I guess we are all naive to varying degrees.) Much has been made of the "precautionary principle," which basically states that if we don't know what the effects of doing something will be, we shouldn't do it. It is likely that there are always negative impacts of our actions, especially when scaled to millions or billions of people. With climate change, it has been argued that since we don't know what positive radiative forcing feedbacks may kick in with increasing greenhouse gas emissions, we should avoid pumping more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The precautionary principle makes sense to me, but it does not to many other people. (Similar arguments can be made for food and healthcare initiatives of the recent past.)


We live in a world where "freedom" of action is valued, especially if that "freedom" leads to job creation and profit for people. What this inevitably leads to is the acceptance of actions whose impacts are ill-defined and unknown. Once we grant this "freedom," it is hard to take that "freedom" back, or to regulate it, or temper it. (I can imagine how hard it must be to be a parent.) The "freedom" grows in magnitude like a chain reaction, rooting itself in our sensibilities and communities. Such rooting makes it difficult to move away the behaviour, just as it is difficult to break a bad habit. But we always realise that there are negative impacts to these "free" actions, and so we may therefore seek to regulate them, to temper them, through law. Such laws are by their nature retrospective, and not proactive. The goals of the regulators are then themselves tempered by the will of industry, and indeed we end up with weaker, retrospective law. Almost all of the environmental laws I can think of, including major pieces of legislation such as the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act, were all put in place retrospectively. I wonder what it would be like if we had proactive law more widely practiced. (Definitely read this document - various legal facets are very well articulated, and not in incomprehensible legalese.)


I think there are issues with such forward-looking approaches that may be far-reaching. I truly question whether it is biologically possible for human mentality to have evolved to fully comprehend the long-term impacts of our actions. Not long a time, on an evolutionary scale, has passed since we were hunter-gatherers. Our ability to think and envision may in fact be limited to such short time scales that we are in fact still mentally hunter-gatherers - shooting from the hip and making decisions that are "good" in the short term, but are inherently against the tide of nature in the long term. 

The laws governing the world's largest dump - an introduction

Can you guess what it is? It is 139 million square miles in size...

Fluids have taken up a significant portion of my life, and I am not sad about that fact. Fluids are beautiful (example 1, 2). We breath fluids, drink them and use the word as an adjective of praise and beauty. I want to talk a little bit about one essential fluid of our Earth, water, which comprises the hydrosphere. In particular, I will focus on oceans and the seas.

The fundamental property of fluids, i.e. flow, is something that our society has been taking advantage of for a long time now. We can dump things into a large fluid body, knowing all well that pressure gradients driven by energy received from the sun will cause motion to that body, and effortlessly carry away whatever it is we dump into it. It comes as no surprise then that the atmosphere and air (another essential fluid) and the oceans and seas have been violated, and are continuing to be violated through reckless behaviour.

You may have heard about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which I have mentioned previously (here, here, here). Ocean gyres have basically been concentrating trash either dumped into the ocean, or through carelessness has ended there over decades. The boundaries of these gyres are far removed from the pretty beaches and coasts of island nations and those with coasts...although trash does wash ashore (Unfortunately, no major nation can exist in the middle of a gyre. If the Midway Islands were a major nation, I am sure people would be up in arms about trash washing up on the nation's shores). Regardless, according to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, a country's responsibility, or conversely, the area of sea that is under the country's responsibility extends out 24 nautical miles (12 nautical miles of territorial water, 12 nautical miles of contiguous zone). It is only within these 24 nautical miles that a country can enforce regulations regarding taxation and pollution. Beyond this region, is the high seas, water under no one's responsibility or legal reach. This has proven to be very convenient for nations under the International Maritime Organisation, the UN body that oversees the world's shipping, to avoid much responsibility of their actions over the high seas. Who do you assign blame for marine degradation to? The country where the ship was docked? The country of destination? The country the ship was registered in? But wait, there were citizens of twelve nationalities on board. Also, the marine harm happened over the high seas...

Food from trash

Have you ever been dumpster diving before? I certainly have. One winter, I ate like a king every day - I dumpster dove at the local Trader Joe's. Wine, lemonade, cheeses, breads, micro-greens, oranges, cereals, flowers and so much more were freely available to anyone that cared to just wait until midnight when the last employees of Trader Joe's left after cleaning. That winter, I reckon I spent only $100 at an actual store (i.e. the People's Food Coop) on things like milk and butter.

I am reminded of this winter because yesterday, on the best show on the radio, The Story, Jeremy Seifert talked about his recent attempts at trying to reduce food wastage in America. He mentioned that more than 100 billion pounds of food are wasted each year in USA alone. I'm sorry, did you read that correctly? 100 billion pounds. A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation tells me, very conservatively, that that is enough food for more than 60 million people (assuming 180 lb people, eating their own body weight every 40 days). Well, that's a shame. On average, we throw away approximately a quater of the food we buy. Did you read that correctly? A quarter. What is it about the culture in USA that allows it to be morally and ethically acceptable to waste so much food? I can think of several reasons.
1) We don't know where our food comes from. Food just seems to magically appear in the grocery store. We don't know about the effort it takes to create food.
2) We have lost touch with nature and with the capacities of our bodies. Why would we throw away a whole head of broccoli if just one little part of it is bruised? Why do most people just superficially eat an apple and not just the whole thing (maybe barring the seeds), core and all? In the end, it is just all food, and your body can handle things being bruised...trust me.
3) We have a skewed understanding of what food is supposed to look like. This is similar to the previous point, to some extent. But further, who really cares if the carrot is two-pronged, or if the tomato is not a perfect ellipsoid? Your body doesn't...trust me.
4) We love laws. In the name of "public health" and "cleanliness" we have standards for what sorts of food are acceptable to be eaten and served and sold, and what not.