So far, energy and climate policies have been rather unsuccessful in reversing climate change. In order to avoid negative effects, like danger of food security or water supply, it is essential to drastically cut down on global GHG emissions. In his keynote speech, Prof Felix Ekardt argues to focus on societal changes rather than on new technologies. In his opinion, technical solutions are overestimated; e.g. renewable energies are not enough to stop climate change. Societal change is needed to tackle the problem of for example meat consumption and its impact on climate change. In theory, societal change sounds very easy to conduct, but proves to be more difficult in practice - even though a straightforward suggestion would be to simply eat less meat. Why is this problem so difficult to deal with in reality? According to Prof Ekardt, this is not necessarily a question of knowledge or political and economic power, which are also relevant, but not the most decisive factors. Instead, the existence of people in circles – sometimes vicious circles - is the most important aspect. The dependence of companies and consumers, politicians and voters on each other is crtitical. In order to implement change, all actors have to move collectively, otherwise there is no movement at all. Factors, such as conceptions of normality, human emotions, tendencies towards convenience, egoism, traditional values, collective goods and path dependencies play a bigger role and should be more addressed by policy-makers.