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The Story was produced at North Carolina Public Radio - WUNC and was heard on over 100 stations.Visit The Story web site to listen to this program and for more details, archives, show highlights and more podcasts. UPDATE 1.13.2020: The Story web site has been decommissioned and is in the process of being archived. It may return at a later date.

One Man's Mission To Keep Drivers From Idling Their Cars

Illustration: A car idling
Verdant Vigilante

A few years ago, New Yorker George Pakenham approached an idling limousine and asked the driver to turn off his engine. To George's surprise, the driver obliged. Emboldened, Pakenham started approaching drivers of other idling cars and trucks in an effort to curtail pollution. He's approached more than 2,900 drivers.

“More often than not, it was friendly,” Pakenham says. “And more often than not, I achieved my goal of having them shut their engine off.”

In this conversation with host Dick Gordon, Pakenham talks about trying to persuade the city to enforce its own law and about the good – or ugly – interactions he’s had with drivers.

Hear this conversation on The Story's website. Also in this show: GarretEan likes to drop quarters in expired parking meters – not just out of kindness, but to prevent the city from making money on parking tickets; and long-time Detroit arts patron Harriet Berg talks about meeting Mexican muralist Diego Rivera and her city’s underground art lovers.

Before coming to North Carolina Public Radio to host The Story, Dick Gordon was host of The Connection, a daily national call-in talk show produced in Boston, from 2001 to 2005. Gordon is well-known in the profession as an experienced, seasoned journalist with an extensive background in both international and domestic reporting. He was a war correspondent and back-up host for the CBC's This Morning, a national current affairs radio program. An award winning journalist, he has also served as a Parliamentary reporter, Moscow correspondent and South Asia correspondent for both radio and television.
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