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> Some (e.g. right to repair, sadly) will achieve almost nothing at all. I'd be curious as to why you say that. I feel that, right now, you would be correct. But if we could move society to a new paradigm where right-to-repair were the default, then cheap non-OEM parts manufacturers would bloom and repairing something would become much cheaper than replacing. Imagine if every object sold had to come with a manual describing how to repair common failures, and a support department to answer for other components. Personal anecdote: My $700 oven has a microswitch that broke. The oven wouldn't work without it but the replacement part was all of $5. However the vast majority wouldn't know how to repair it. Expand this to cellphones, computers, tables, wardrobes, cars, tractors and I feel it would have an impact. And... I suppose... my gut feeling is the biggest part of the problem is psychological. People are overwhelmed and don't know what they can do to help. Raising awareness is crucial, but just raising awareness obviously does nothing to reduce CO2 emissions - it's in second order effects when people start thinking harder about what they can do. Another anecdote: I gave a seminar recently about energy to a small local environmental conference in a nearby town. My starting point was that nobody knows how to talk about energy - we can talk about length, size, weight, cost, speed, age, price, longevity and so, because we know the units - feet or meters, pounds or kilograms, dollars/euros/yen/etc, mph/kph/mps/etc and so on. But ask someone what is a "Joule" or what can you do with a "kilowatt-hour" and you get blank stares. The outcome? I learned of an attendee who drew lines on his kettle for 1-cup, 2-cups, and so on, and now boils only the necessary amount of water. That won't really move the needle on CO2, but it will raise awareness. |
That's the reason why. That's just too big of an "if".
Any premise that is predicated on an artificially-induced complete paradigm (counter to the interests of capital, no less) shift to bear significant fruit is pretty much a non-starter. You need incredible buy in for that (which right-to-repair is just too niche to have), and established interests will still push against it every step of the way.
Maybe the EU could do it, but even then I'm skeptical.