BY: Marianne K. Amoss, Scott Carlson, David Dudley, Brent Englar, and Greg Hanscom

Illustrations by Brian Payne

Global warming? We can fix that. So say economist Steven Levitt and journalist Stephen Dubner in their new book, Superfreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance. "Once you eliminate the moralism and the angst," they write, "the task of reversing global warming boils down to a straightforward engineering problem." In a chapter called "What do Al Gore and Mount Pinatubo have in common?" they provide some easy remedies to our rolling, slow-motion climate catastrophe, most of which are designed to mimic volcanoes, which shade—and cool—the planet with their airborne effluent. The authors' favorite geo-engineering technique: pumping sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere via an 18-mile-high hose.

Never mind that building an 18-mile-high "garden hose to the sky" isn't as straightforward as it might seem. Most serious climate scientists agree that the only plausible way to get ourselves out of this mess is to curb our greenhouse gas emissions. Trouble is, that is going to require those of us who live highest on the hog to change the way we do things. And we all know that is really the hardest thing of all. But where there is difficulty, there is also opportunity.

In this year's Breakthroughs issue, we steer clear of great-hoses-to-the-sky-style solutions and instead set our sights on modest innovations with substantial potential payoff right here in Baltimore. Sure, there are some gadgets here—super-green houses and flying ferryboats—but most of these ideas are relatively low tech. We explore ways to better dispose of food scraps and to stretch dwindling philanthropic dollars. We look at efforts to get ordinary citizens involved in cleaning up the city and improving the health of residents. It's our nod to elegant simplicity, the importance of human relationships, and the transformative power of collective action. These ideas don't get you off the hook, good citizen, but they may just make your job a little more interesting.



The New Green House

The Big Idea: Since the 1990s, a cadre of German architects has been quietly refining a next-generation green building standard far more rigorous than the popular LEED ratings. Behold the Passivhaus—an uber-insulated box so airtight that it doesn't need a furnace. Instead, there's an energy-recovery ventilation system that constantly draws in and warms outside air. Outfitted with impregnable triple-glazed windows filled with argon gas and a thick envelope of insulation that even extends underneath the building's basement slab, Passive Houses are up to 90 percent more energy efficient than traditional homes. And no more chilly drafts or cold feet on winter mornings: "You can walk around in socks all day," says Jonas Risén, an architect at the Baltimore-based architecture firm Ziger/Snead who was trained in Passive House design principles by architect Katrin Klingenberg, head of the U.S. affiliate of Germany's Passivhaus Institut. That spaceship-like climatological uniformity—walls, floors, windows, and air are all about the same temperature—might take some getting used to, but it's hard to argue with the remarkable efficiency. Adherents often note that you can heat the place with the energy it takes to run a hair dryer. And, unlike homes that use "active" green technologies such as photovoltaic panels that demand constant maintenance, a Passive House just sits there, saving money. "You're paying for the cheapest thing—insulation," Risén says.

When could it happen?
It's already happening—in Europe, where perhaps twenty thousand buildings conform to the Passive House standard, mostly in Germany and Scandinavia. There are currently only a handful of Passive Houses in the U.S., but several are in the pipeline, and by spring there should be about eighty consultants certified in the technique. Go to www.passivehouse.us for a full list, or see Risén's new website, www.getactivegopassive.com, for local info.

Second opinion:
Building costs are higher than for a normal house, especially for early adopters. (In Germany, which boasts an extensive supplier network for Passive House components such as windows and heat exchangers, costs are only a fraction higher.) And you can't just pick up the parts and Passive-ize an existing house piecemeal. "The systems all have to work together," Risén notes.



TECHNOLOGY
Crowdsourcing for a Cause

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The Big Idea: So you're waiting for the bus and you have a couple of minutes to kill. Oh please, you're thinking, give me something to do other than updating my status on Facebook for the fifth time today. Micro-volunteering to the rescue! The Extraordinaries, a San Francisco-based social enterprise company, has developed an app for the iPhone that allows you to accomplish a host of teeny, feel-good tasks on the fly. Add to a map of play spaces for kids. Record a thirty-second audio clip telling the government what immigration means to you. Make a statement opposing violence against women. The app's creators call the idea "micro-volunteering." NPR dubbed it "turning ADD into AID." A second company, City Sourced, in Los Angeles, has taken this crowdsourcing-for-a-cause model and created a next-generation 311 system: To report a sewage leak or a pile of illegally dumped garbage, just snap a photo of the offending scene, type a short caption, and zap it instantly into the system, which pins the image to your exact coordinates on an online city map. The result is a map of urban blight—handy for residents and city government alike. The best aspect? Doing your part takes no more than sixty seconds. "Our goal is to take the friction out of civic engagement," says Jason Kiesel, the founder and chief architect of City Sourced. With the rise of smartphones, all we need is a groundswell of civic mindedness. Not a problem, says Kiesel: "Civic is the new green."

When could it happen?
The city of San José has already adopted City Sourced as its official nuisance reporting system, and Kiesel says deals are in the works with other cities. (The company would not reveal the price tag.) But the company has created public online maps for Baltimore and other cities, set to launch at www.citysourced.com before this issue hits the streets. So grab your iPhone and dive in! City Hall will tune in soon enough.

Second Opinion:
Not everyone can afford an iPhone. Still, Kiesel insists that within two years, a camera and geographic positioning system will be standard equipment for most mobile phones.



FOOD
Produce for People


The Big Idea: Cities are full of trees and shrubs that look pretty but mostly just sit there. In the midst of a nationwide economic crisis, when inner-city folks aren't getting enough affordable fresh fruits and vegetables, we ought to swap out some of those ornamentals for edibles—and allow citizens to help themselves. Or so says Darrin Nordahl in his new book, Public Produce: The New Urban Agriculture, which reads like an anarchist's guide to community gardening. Imagine Patterson Park or the boulevard on Broadway planted with apples, peaches, and figs, free for the taking. Nordahl says he got the idea while working as an urban planner in Berkeley, California; he would pass fruit trees, often picked clean, on the walk from his home to the transit station. He found that interest in an edible landscape wasn't just a Left Coast thing when he moved to Davenport, Iowa, to be the city designer. "People here had just as strong a desire for fresh food," he says, especially as more folks learn about industrial food production and oil shortages. He is now helping to set up a park with fruit trees for the public. "The timing is spot-on." A group of activist artists called Fallen Fruit has made maps of available fruit in Los Angeles and is pushing the city to establish public orchards.

When could it happen?
Here in Baltimore, city officials planted a food-garden in front of City Hall this year; although the produce was meant for the needy, many people simply helped themselves. "I never saw a ripe tomato down there," says Bill Vondrasek, the acting chief of parks.

Second opinion:
Who maintains the plants, and what if they attract vermin and drop fruit everywhere? Nordahl says the city and residents have to work out the thorny details, but he points out that even purely decorative plants drop leaves and branches and tear up sidewalks with their roots. "It is a myth that ornamentals are not messy or do not require maintenance," he says.



THE ENVIRONMENT
A City-Sized Compost Heap

The Big Idea: The rush on yellow bins has passed. The city's recycling program is humming along like a German sports car. But most of our nutrient-rich food scraps are still being hauled off to the incinerator: According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the average household tosses 470 pounds of food into the garbage each year. In an effort to spin this waste stream into gold, some municipalities are turning to composting on a mountainous scale. Cities like Seattle and Toronto collect food scraps curbside. San Francisco residents must separate food scraps from other waste at their homes, apartment buildings, and businesses or face $100 to $500 fines. It's part of San Francisco's initiative to stanch the flow of waste to incinerators and landfills by 2020, and it has the added benefit of combating global warming: Incinerators kick out greenhouse gasses such as carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide, while anaerobic bacteria in landfills produce methane. The bacteria in an oxygen-rich compost heap pump out fewer heat-trapping gases. The main byproducts are water and beautiful, black dirt. "Baltimore spends a lot of money buying compost for landscaping, recreation and parks, and other things," says Keith Losoya, a principal partner in the local waste management firm Waste Neutral. "Why not take our food waste, compost it, and bring it back?"

When could it happen?
Waste Neutral currently hauls 20 tons of food waste weekly from institutions and businesses such as Johns Hopkins University, Nordstrom, and Woodberry Kitchen. The waste composts in open-air windrows in Carroll County. Losoya, who also chairs the waste committee for the city's sustainability commission, predicts that within four to five years, there will be a contained (and decidedly less stinky) "in-vessel" composting system in the city—making curbside collection more viable.

Second Opinion:
There is just one bummer: the compost bucket. Anyone who braves the backyard compost gambit knows what a nasty thing the intermediary vessel, lurking in a corner of the kitchen, can become. Fruit flies love it, and rest assured that an uncapped bucket on the curb will attract rats. Losoya insists that a well-managed collection system can keep things sanitary and smelling good—but what happens under the sink is your own problem.



TRANSPORTATION
Bay Ferry 2.0

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• Bay flyer: A local tech firm dreamed up this boat-plane to ferry passengers across the Bay at 70 miles per hour.

The Big Idea: Taking a page from history, alternative-transportation advocates are agitating to reboot the Chesapeake Bay's mothballed ferry system, which could siphon traffic from the Bay Bridge and offer swift Inner-Harbor-to-Eastern-Shore service for nautical commuters and car-free daytrippers. "The bay is a huge underutilized transit resource—there's nobody out there," says architect Craig Purcell, director of urban design at the Baltimore-based architecture firm Brown Craig Turner and leader of an ad-hoc committee exploring the idea of a high-speed passenger ferry system. Noting that the bay is the only large body of water in the United States with no water-based transit option, Purcell and his confederates took up the challenge of making one of Martin O'Malley's gubernatorial campaign ideas come true, releasing a report in November 2007 spelling out their plan: a network of fast, shallow-draft passenger ferries skimming along at 40 knots between Western Shore population centers (Aberdeen, Baltimore, Annapolis) and Eastern Shore vacation spots and bedroom communities (Rock Hall, Kent Island, St. Michaels, Cambridge). One space-age proposal, from committee member Mark Rice of Baltimore's Maritime Applied Physics Corp., calls for a wing-like hydrofoil "boat-plane" capable of nearly 70 miles per hour. You could step out of your rowhouse in Canton, stroll to the ferry terminal, and roar across the bay to Rock Hall—an 18-mile hop—in about thirty minutes. (The equivalent terrestrial trip is 87 miles and about two hours.) Put enough ferries in the water and you could save the billions of dollars it would cost to erect a third Bay Bridge span, ease the carbon footprint of the average shore-to-shore trip, and encourage denser, smart growth-friendly development near the ferry's ports-of-call.

When could it happen?
In theory, a quick, no-frills ferry service could be launched in less than two years. "The boats are everywhere," says Purcell, who offers Washington State's Puget Sound ferries as a possible model for a bay system.

Second opinion:
Purcell says slower car ferries wouldn't be able to compete with the Bay Bridge. Still, the department of transportation was skeptical of the scheme for passenger-only service. After all, how do you get around on the Eastern Shore without a car? A fleet of Zipcars or free electric jitneys would solve the problem, but don't hold your breath. "This is a modality shift," he says. "We're going from one form of transportation to another."



PUBLIC POLICY
Face-to-Face Foreclosure Prevention

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The Big Idea: The scene has been compared to a Moroccan souk or the floor of the New York Stock Exchange: Every Thursday in Philadelphia County's first judicial district Court of Common Pleas, a representative of the prothonotary's office calls for a report on roughly two hundred home foreclosure cases. On one side are lawyers representing mortgage banks; on the other, homeowners and their volunteer legal counsel. Before a bank can put a home up for sheriff's sale in this district, which encompasses the entire city of Philadelphia, the court requires bank representatives to have a face-to-face talk with the owner of that home. Judge Annette Rizzo, who spearheaded the effort, says it hearkens back to the days when bankers were family friends, willing to work with the recipients of their loans through tough economic times. That human connection seems to be producing results: Rizzo says that since the mortgage crisis hit in 2008, more than five thousand homeowners have passed through the program, and more than two thousand homes have been kept out of foreclosure or removed from the auction block. "We're saving homes one address at a time," she says.

When Could it happen?
The state of Maryland has set up a website (www.mdhope.org) and hotline (1-877-462-7555) for homeowners and renters facing foreclosure, and counseling services are available statewide. Still, foreclosures rose through the first half of 2009. Rizzo says she got her program up and running in seven weeks, but only with several years of preparation work and the threat of a lawsuit adding some urgency.

Second Opinion:
Critics of Rizzo's approach say that requiring mediation between lenders and homeowners creates onerous bureaucratic hoops. It also requires a massive outreach effort: Philadelphia actually sends people to the doors of homeowners who are facing foreclosure, giving them the tools they'll need to stay in their homes. Even then, says Rizzo, "sometimes a graceful exit is a good resolution."



MEDIA
Next-Generation Journalism

The Big Idea: With traditional media outfits struggling to reinvent themselves in the digital age, Temple University's undergraduate journalism program is preparing its students for the future—and filling the growing need for street-wise reporting. In the Multimedia Urban Reporting Lab (MURL), a required class since 2005, seniors are equipped with video and still cameras, tripods, lights, and digital recorders. In teams of two, they take to the streets, digging up stories in parts of Philadelphia that aren't well covered. "We send students into tough neighborhoods. Looking from the outside, the student says, ‘I'm gonna get killed. I'm gonna get robbed,'" says co-director Christopher Harper, a twenty-year veteran of print and broadcast journalism. "[But] the journalists learn that a neighborhood is made of people. And they find great stories." The work appears on MURL's online publication, Philadelphia Neighborhoods (http://sct.temple.edu/blogs/murl/), and in other local and national papers. Harper says journalists need to be tech-savvy and able to adapt to the fast-changing media landscape. "The idea is to provide them with the tools necessary to compete in today's market."

When could it happen?
Baltimore colleges and universities offer courses in multimedia and urban reporting, but nothing exactly like MURL exists here. Harper says it took two years and about $40,500 of university funds for equipment to get the program going. Elsewhere, the journalism department at the University of California, Berkeley, is teaming up with public radio and TV station KQED on a similar endeavor called the Bay Area News Project—with a $5 million start-up grant.

Second opinion:
In addition to the start-up money, there is also the matter of ongoing funding needs. MURL's annual expenses range from $100,000 to $140,000. Temple's journalism program, with 800 students (160 to 170 go through MURL each year) can pull that off. The closest J-school of that scale to Baltimore is the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, College Park, 30 miles away.



MONEY
Philanthropy That Keeps On Giving

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The Big Idea: Ray Carrier had a vision. All he needed was money. Carrier, a management consultant looking for a career change, wanted to open a shop called Green Rider to sell zippy, zero-emissions electric scooters. However, no bank would loan him the $60,000 he needed to buy his first shipment of Chinese-made inventory. He did eventually get his loan—from the Abell Foundation, an outfit better known for giving grants to nonprofits than making loans to business start-ups. Abell is one of a growing number of foundations that are stretching their philanthropic footprints by handing out money—and then asking for it back, plus interest, so it can be given or loaned again. The practice, called "program-related investment," was pioneered by the Ford Foundation in the 1960s but has remained on the fringe until recently. "There's a lot of interest in this type of investment right now," says Tracy Kartye, a senior social investment analyst at the Annie E. Casey Foundation. "With the recession, foundations are looking for ways to supplement what they're doing with grant-making." Casey has plowed almost $54 million of its endowment into these loans, including a seven-year, $500,000 loan to finance affordable housing in the neighborhood of Oliver, adjacent to East Baltimore redevelopment efforts that Casey supports with both loan guarantees and grants.

When could it happen?
Foundations have been able to count program-related investment toward their required annual "pay-out" since 1969, but today, less than $1 billion is invested this way. Lester Salamon, founding director of the Center for Civil Society Studies at Johns Hopkins University, says foundations need to start thinking of themselves as "philanthropic banks." Grants, he says, are "19th-century technology."

Second Opinion:
Return on program-related investments is low because interest rates, by law, must be below market rates. These loans can be risky, too. If Ray Carrier can't clear enough of his inventory to pay back his loan, Abell Foundation President Robert Embry says, "We own the scooters."




THE ARTS
Pay to Play

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The Big Idea: As arts organizations watch their funding sources evaporate, Seattle's ACT Theatre has tapped into a source of revenue that hasn't been widespread since the Renaissance: patronage. The idea was reborn in 2005, when Seattle real estate broker Charles Staadecker approached Kurt Beattie, artistic director at ACT, with a proposal to commission a new play as a birthday gift for his wife, Benita. The resulting comedy, Becky's New Car, by longtime ACT collaborator Steven Dietz, is about a woman who escapes her working-class routine by having an affair with a millionaire who believes she's a widow. It premiered in 2008 as the inaugural fruit of ACT's New Works for the American Stage program, which brings together playwrights and private individuals who wish to fund the development of a new theatrical piece. Anita Montgomery, ACT's literary manager and education director, says the upfront cost to the patron is less than the price of a new car, "which I don't think is outrageous for a play that could possibly live forever. For me, it's a question of what your priorities are: Are you someone who's really interested in the theater and wants to be a part of the process?"

When could it happen?
According to Montgomery, ACT is in the process of finalizing its sixth New Works project. A typical commission—from the germ of an idea to a completed script (production is not guaranteed)—might run several years. Although Montgomery does not know of other theaters with similar programs, the patronage impulse has found another outlet online, albeit with a more democratic bent: Websites such as Spot.Us allow users to contribute funds to freelance journalists. KickStarter.com also solicits donations on behalf of musicians, filmmakers, and other artists.

Second Opinion:
Montgomery acknowledges that artists can be skeptical: "You want me to write a play for who?" is a common first response from playwrights offered a New Works commission. To ensure toes are not stepped on, ACT establishes from the start both the playwright's and the patron's expectations. "The work ultimately belongs to the artist," Montgomery emphasizes. "The playwright can't write to someone's specs. They need freedom to write the play they need to write."



HEALTH
Door-to-Door Doctoring

The Big Idea: In 2007, alarmed at the number of infants landing in the city's neonatal intensive care units, the director of an East Baltimore health clinic approached Dr. Chris Gibbons, an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health. Gibbons, a former surgeon, had created a system of "community health workers"—local residents with basic health care training who visited people in their homes, connecting the ill, elderly, and addicted with medical services. The premature and underweight babies were largely the result of teen pregnancy, Gibbons says. "These mothers are not insured. Hospitals are losing a lot of money because of these births." He put his community health workers on the case. Two years later, preliminary results show that, compared to published rates for African American newborns, babies that passed through the program were nearly one-third less likely to be born too early or underweight, and 80 percent less likely to end up in the NICU. Gibbons estimates the program has saved hospitals $1.2 million. Sadly, the program was discontinued December 1 due to lack of funding. Still, Gibbons says the model is sound. "The days of doctors doing house calls are over. But in every culture, there are individuals who are natural leaders. The trick is to identify them and use them as physician extenders."

When could it happen?
Gibbons says Johns Hopkins Hospital has indicated that it will contribute funding to the effort, and the model could be incorporated into the "birth outcomes" program currently in the works at the city health department.

Second opinion:
Gibbons is upfront about the program's weak spots: "This model did some good work. But we didn't do anything about poverty. We didn't do anything about teen pregnancy."