In central Europe our biggest tarpit are sustainability / climate topics. Even founders that are smart enough to realize the difficulties still pursue these topics because of an unfoly feedback loop where government agencies almost exclusively fund those "societally important" areas. There's no other risk capital available so most founders align their goals, just to fold 1-2 years later.

I'm not sure I agree with this - though I'm not in central Europe.

Sustainability and climate are not products or businesses in themselves.

If you're trying to sell sustainabiity, what is your business? What are you selling? If it's advice on how people can be sustainable, or carbon credits or something, sure, those are things that may be tarpits.

But electric vehicles were probably a tarpit idea until they went from being advanced golf carts to being real cars.

Environmentally friendly packaging is doing very well. Etc etc.

I mean that's better then funding a bunch of startups that try and use psychological traps to capture the attention of your kids and ruining their ability to focus. Most of them also fold 1-2 years later.