A look back at economic pessimism

In comments in a post here yesterday, I was arguing that those economists who are optimistic on the cost of taking serious action on CO2 emissions probably have history on their side, in that there are clear examples of where government mandated changes for environmental reasons did not have the terrible economic costs that the industry initially claimed.   The examples I gave were the introduction of unleaded petrol, removing CFCs, and catalytic converters in cars.

Now, I was  really just going by memory on these, but I've looked up what was said about catalytic converters in the 1970's, and it's very interesting to read in retrospect.  These extracts are from a Thomas Friedman book: