Politics that didn't Happen

As the climate crisis intensified in 2015, governments desperately tried to curb CO2 emissions. They quickly discovered that, since production costs outweighted ecological benefits, over-promoting low-emission cars or low-consumption electric appliances was actually intensifying climate change. So they tried something else.
In a rare occurence of political harmony, all OECD countries decided to introduce the one-phone policy. The rules were simple: no person was allowed to buy a new phone more than once every two years. If the phone got broken or stolen, it was possible to buy a new one, but only of the exact same make and model as the previous phone.
Public outrage peaked as the policy was introduced, but then quickly subsided. After a year, nobody cared anymore, and consumption of electrical appliances switched from quantity to quality on all fronts, and diminished emissions in OECD countries by almost 10%.
Today, the purchase of any product whose production causes emissions of more than 40 kg of CO2 is regulated by governments all over the world, and it seems that carbon emissions are well on track to reach pre-industrial levels by 2030.