Florida State University’s College of Social Sciences and Public Policy (COSSPP) hosted a fireside chat and book signing with Richard Sandor, Ph.D., on Thursday, April 9, in the Brian and Renee Murphy Forum of the Herbert Wertheim Center for Business Excellence.
Before a standing-room-only crowd of more than 200 students, faculty and staff, the conversation, moderated by COSSPP Dean Tim Chapin, traced Dr. Sandor’s six-decade career from trading equities as a young economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, to inventing interest rate futures at the Chicago Board of Trade, to designing the market-based systems that helped solve acid rain and laid the groundwork for global carbon trading.
The discussion centered on Dr. Sandor’s latest book, Carbon Hunters: Reflections and Forecasts of Climate Markets in the 21st Century (World Scientific, October 2025), co-authored with longtime collaborator Paula DiPerna. The book explores the development and future of global carbon markets, drawing on the authors’ decades of work building environmental finance from the ground up.
Dr. Sandor walked the audience through the origins of cap and trade, explaining how a 1989 conversation with lime producers led him to propose a market-based solution to acid rain. Once enacted, the program reduced sulfur dioxide emissions dramatically at a total program cost of roughly $1 to $3 billion, while generating an estimated $50 to $150 billion per year in reduced medical costs from lung diseases. He described it as what many economists now call “the grandest experiment in environment ever.”
From there, the conversation moved to climate. Dr. Sandor recounted his presentation at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, where he argued that carbon emissions could be commoditized and traded, and his later work founding the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) during an era when there was no federal law requiring emission reductions. Building CCX required a cross-country tour pitching more than 100 companies, a process he described as equal parts economics and behavioral psychology. The exchange eventually grew to 108 members representing a carbon footprint the size of Germany’s and was sold to the Intercontinental Exchange for $600 million.
Throughout the talk, Dr. Sandor returned to a message for students: question the status quo, focus relentlessly on solving one problem at a time, and look for the coalitions of winners that make change possible. “As young minds, do not accept the proven status quo,” he told the audience. “Your job is to question it always.”
Asked by Dean Chapin why he remains optimistic about climate challenges despite rising greenhouse gas emissions, Dr. Sandor pointed to the students in the room. He noted that today’s largest technology companies, including Google, Microsoft, and Nvidia, have become among the world’s largest electricity consumers through their data centers, and are also now the largest buyers in the voluntary carbon market, funding rainforest preservation in Africa and South America and cook stoves for rural communities in India. He argued that the next generation of consumers and innovators will drive the next wave of environmental finance solutions. “It’s a bad bet to bet against your generation,” Dr. Sandor said. “You are the best and the brightest.”
Dr. Sandor is CEO of Environmental Financial Products, which was the incubator to the Chicago Climate Exchange and the American Financial Exchange. He also serves as the Aaron Director Lecturer in Law and Economics at the University of Chicago Law School and as an honorary professor at the School of Economics at Fudan University and the University of Hong Kong. Known worldwide as the “Father of Financial Futures,” he was named a “Hero of the Planet” by Time magazine in 2002 and one of the magazine’s “Heroes of the Environment” in 2007. In October 2013, he was awarded the title of Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur (Knight of the Legion of Honor) in France for his accomplishments in environmental finance and carbon trading.
The event was hosted by FSU’s College of Social Sciences and Public Policy, reflecting the college’s commitment to bringing distinguished voices in finance, economics, and public policy to campus.
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