I was at Resilient Cities conference this week - which kind of blew my mind open. It's amazing how shielded we are from the environmental impacts of our lifestyles when we live in cities. It's like there aren't any, because we export them out into landfills, the oceans, and other wondrous places.
One of the shortcomings of the cooperative movement, is the very fact that it is a movement. Movements are always against something, which means they are polarizing by nature, which means there will always be problems of scalability because the 'us' will always be in tension with the 'them'. Also, movements are necessarily political, and politics is a divisive game.