Unexpectedly being able to spend only a few hours in the official Bella Conference Center during the whole week, I had to find other venues. One overall interesting one was the KlimaForum – “The People’s Summit”. Here, in the center of town, a very different atmosphere reigned. It was basically another universe. I felt *slightly* overdressed with my suit among the many civil society reps and grassroots activists from all over the world. Here one could hear vivid discussions in the hallways, pick up all sorts of info material of many shades and eat great, cheap organic food. On the program was a multitude of events and workshops on every imaginable issue related to climate change. The reason why this was another universe was already expressed in the slogan of the Forum: “System change, not climate change”. Here market mechanisms (emissions trading) and technology hopes (e.g. CCS) were less seen as the solution; rights-based and reparation (“climate debt” of rich countries) approaches dominated; and concerns for the poor and climate-vulnerable were high (“survival is not negotiable”).