You say Manhattan is a great model of green living—since per capita, New Yorkers consume a third less energy than people in places like Vermont. Can that way of life be replicated?
We’re going to have to find ways to emulate living in a dense city. That’s tough for us in wide-open Connecticut. The general view of environmentalists is that living in the country puts you in touch with the earth, while New Yorkers are ecological enemies. Quite the opposite is the case.

Are New Yorkers more aware?
New Yorkers take the subway not because they have an elevated environmental conscience. It’s because driving is ridiculously unpleasant in New York City.

Why don’t you live in New York?
If my wife and I moved to New York or downtown San Francisco tomorrow, our personal carbon footprint would shrink but the world’s carbon footprint would remain unchanged because we’d have to sell our house and our cars to someone. What we need to do, globally, is to encourage development in places that are already dense and efficient and discourage it in places that are not.

You criticize LEED certification as being misguided. Why so?
LEED has done good things, but it has also created the misconception that green is a major expense item. You can get platinum certification for something that doesn’t make sense—that’s plopped in the middle of nowhere and accessible only by a thruway. Almost any building in Manhattan is greener than any platinum LEED-certified building in a non-dense location.

You say recessions are good for the environment. What can we learn from that?
In 2008 we did the unthinkable: we shrank our carbon footprint because of the dramatic rise in fuel prices and the economic collapse. Prosperity fuels man-made gasses. Unfortunately, the alternative—consuming less—has horrible economic consequences.

Your essential conclusion—drive less, live closer, live smaller—would seem compelling to mainstream environmentalists. Why do you think it’s not?
Most environmentalists are nature lovers. They live by the idea that the only authentic life is one that you’re in direct contact with the natural world—and that has helped spread the sprawl into those places.

If Obama made you national Planning & Zoning Czar with unrestrained powers, what laws would you enact?
Zoning separates where people work and live and shop. Undoing that is a huge problem. Most of our zoning regulations are blueprints for sprawl and encourage driving—by requiring wide separation, use of small percentage of lots, and by limiting building heights.

What’s the best way to get your book—to drive to a bookstore or to have UPS deliver it from an online order?
Yes, good point, driving pervades everything we do.