In 1990, by an overwhelming majority, Congress amended the Clean Air Act to establish a market for electric utilities to trade the right to emit sulfur dioxide, one of the main contributors to acid rain.

The law was based on a simple economic insight. If utilities facing high costs to cut emissions could, instead, buy allowances to pollute from those who could cut emissions for less, reducing overall pollution would be much cheaper. The idea had been successfully used before, during the Reagan administration, to reduce lead in gasoline.

It worked again. By 1996, sulfur dioxide emissions had declined by a fifth. A study published a few years later concluded that trading of pollution permits cut the cost almost by half, saving utilities and their customers billions of dollars.

Here’s the not-so-funny punch line: A decade and a half later, when President Obama proposed using “cap and trade” to cut emissions of greenhouse gases — the biggest environmental threat of our time — lawmakers looked back upon this unquestionable success and said “no.”