Taxing bads instead of goods?

This is mentioned in Stieglitz book on the "Roaring Nineties" and is attributed to president Clinton who proposed "a brilliant new idea: Why not start taxing 'bads' - pollution - rather than 'goods' - hard work and savings".

This was indeed turned down by the US energy and automobile companies at the time, and converted into a tiny US gasoline tax increase of a couple of cents.