A new poll shows Californians are increasingly freaked out about climate change. The poll also shows that Californians think the state’s historic drought is related to climate change. Pollsters didn’t ask specifically if the drought is spurring climate change concerns, but the implication seems obvious.

As a Californian I can say the drought at least makes me feel, on a gut level, that something big is shifting. When I am not darting from shadow to shrinking shadow, or squeezing a few drops of moisture from a root I just dug up, I sometimes wonder about how shifts in the weather might shift public perception.

When pollsters from the Public Policy Institute of California asked, “How serious of a threat is global warming to the economy and quality of life for California’s future?,” a lot of people said, “Very serious.” The number of people giving that answer has been trending upward in the last few years, across the political spectrum.

California has the most extensive climate law in the nation, and, when its rules passed in 2006, some warned that they would saddle residents with heavy obligations while other states (and countries) continued burning as much fossil fuel as they wanted. But nine years later, support for the law is still high — it seems Californians are happy to step up and start working on this problem before others.