“We’re becoming a nation of fatties… in part because if you want a quart of milk, you have to take the car.”

Randy Cohen, aka The Ethicist of the NY Times Magazine, goes off on hedonistic car culture, misallocation of public urban space for parking, and the bad rap that congestion taxes tend to get, in this shortened clip of an interview he did with Mark Gorton, of the Open Planning Project.

My favorite excerpts:

“We’re becoming a nation of fatties… in part because if you want a quart of milk, you have to take the car.”

Q: “What’s wrong with driving everywhere?”
A: “Everything…it’s selfish…they knock me down…they pollute the air…the fumes from their cars…it imposes a huge expense…there’s absolutely no need for the private car in manhattan.”

“The automibile undermines our ordinary daily happiness. That’s truly sad.”

“We’re in a moment in NY history … when there is reason to be hopeful about biking”