By drawing on the sociology of consumption and other literature, the chapter contributes to understanding how and why people in affluent contexts are, due to sociopsychological, cultural, and structural factors, locked into high-carbon lifestyles. The chapter discusses both macro- and micro-drivers of high-carbon lifestyles. The former involves how high-carbon lifestyles are embedded within encompassing structures such as capitalism, social stratification (increasing inequalities), and infrastructures of mass consumption, and the latter on how consumption provides social meaning such as identity, positive social relationships, and social status to the consumer. Furthermore, the chapter addresses a variety of invisible drivers of consumption, such as processes of normalization, the role of ignorance, and how everyday high-climate impact practices are temporally and spatially structured. In the final section, the chapter discusses the importance of collective empowerment for unlocking societal patterns of high-carbon lifestyles and argues that a vision for change must take into account the actions and counterpower of people coordinating themselves in bottom-up change-driven processes.