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Based on the Elcano Royal Institute’s 2019 survey on the attitudes of Spanish citizens on the environment and climate change, we have designed a model to understand how climate change mitigation policies and individuals’ norms and attitudes interact, which in turn allows us to make policy recommendations to successfully address the climate challenge. We summarise our contributions in the form of four lessons. First, whenever the politicians do not show any interest in promoting climate change mitigation policies, the strength of public support for the issue vanishes. Second, peer (social) influence, through people’s reference group, modulates the effect of individual factors, such as income. Third, policies based on the assumption that all agents have the same capabilities have less impact than expected or with respect to policies that are tailored towards a heterogeneous population (in terms of income). Finally, the implementation of national mitigation policies cannot be done without also considering the regional differences in public support within a country. Some communities react more positively to specific policies than others and large differences may lead to polarisation.