Mr. Richard Sandor began his career as an economics professor at University of California, Berkeley. He made his name realizing his own original idea of the development of financial futures at the Chicago Board of Trade in the 1970s. 

In the late 1980s' Mr. Sandor started paying attention to the growing problem of air pollution. The biggest environmental threat at this time was forest-killing acid rain, due chiefly to rising levels of sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxide (NO) from coal power plants, factories and cars.  It became clear that the emissions needed to be reduced but no one knew how.   That was when the idea of cap-and-trade system for acid rain was borne.  The program puts a government-mandated limit on the level of pollutants power plants and factories can emit, but allows companies that come in under the limit to trade their excess capacity to companies that exceeded their caps. The market drives companies to be ever more efficient in cutting pollution, because pollution becomes a recognizable cost. "You commodities the air," says Sandor. "Once you place a price, you move industry and innovation."

Even though the idea is a subject of many discussions until today— emissions of SO2 and NO have dropped drastically, as has acid rain. Emissions trading worked because by pricing the air, it helps drive innovation towards pollution control and efficiency, funded in part by the value of the emissions trading market.

Sandor's idea was so successful that he was asked to the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 to help design a program to finance reductions in carbon emissions.

Sandor advocated an emissions trading program similar to the one he'd put forward for acid rain, and his thoughts helped shape the Kyoto Protocol, which requires developed nations to reduce their emissions and created a carbon trading and offset market to speed that process along. In the late 1990s he began formulating the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX).

Despite the fact that CCX is entirely voluntary — meaning the U.S. companies that participate in it aren't being forced to make emissions cuts — the market has been a success. Today, he notes, CCX has more than 400 corporate members, who last year traded 23 million tons worth of carbon emissions — up from 10.3 million in 2006. Over in London , where Sandor opened up a European Climate Exchange — and where companies labor under Kyoto-mandatory carbon caps — trading has been strong, and the company itself is worth over $1 billion. "Carbon cap and trade is not a thing of tomorrow or a thing of today, but a thing of yesterday," says Sandor. "It's been working and going on now for five years without a hitch."

But to truly drive the massive global carbon emissions cuts needed to avert dangerous climate change, a voluntary market like CCX will never be enough. What's needed is a mandatory carbon cap in the biggest carbon market of all — the U.S. If and when that happens, we may see carbon emissions drop as rapidly as SO2 and NO has fallen under Sandor's acid rain market — without emptying our national wallet. "I'm optimistic," says Sandor. "The potential [cap-and-trade] legislation is moving in the right direction. If we design the building right, it won't punish the economy." On this Earth Day, as we grapple with worsening climate change, we should take time to recognize an unlikely hero for the planet.