Sue The Bastards!
Of your list only the Squiggley bulbs were mandated on the basis of the fraudulent “science”.
Catalytic converters get rid of unburnt hydrocarbons in car exhaust, which really are pollution, and thus cut down on smog in urbanized areas. Freon replacement was mandated on the basis of actual science: sampling of the ozone layer and a provable causal mechanism for the growth of the ozone hole (there are chemical reactions between O_3 and chloroflurohydrocarbons that can be readily verified), which, despite Rush Limbaugh’s conflation with AGW, has nothing to do with global warming when it happens whatever its cause.
And last I checked, not all automakers are introducing “hybrids” or electric cars (the only one of the Japanese “big 3” not plagued by recalls lately, Nissan, doesn’t have any in its lineup, and I’m fairly sure Chrysler, Kia, Hyundai, Suzuki, and Mazda have none on offer, and I’ve not heard of plans to introduce them) so the Prius, while it might help Toyota fulfill a CAFE mandate, is hardly the result of a government mandate, but rather a way for Toyota to profit from the nitwitted enthusiasms of the sort of people who think that low-flow toilets “save the earth”. But that’s the free market at work.
(Though it does make one wonder, whether too much of Toyota and Honda’s engineering expertise got diverted into work on electric power systems to the neglect of basic things like brakes.)