Trump did not have any words of kindness for those killed and displaced by the California wildfires, nor did he have words of encouragement for those facing terrifying threats like “fire tornadoes” as they work desperately to beat back the blaze. He didn’t even bother to summon a boilerplate “Thoughts and prayers” for the moment.

Instead, Trump blamed the state’s environmental laws — easily the strongest in the nation — for the fires, claiming those regulations are “diverting” water into the Pacific Ocean (an action others chalked up to natural phenomena like “gravity” and “rivers”). Not to be outdone even by himself, Trump then blamed the trees for the conflagration. The Lorax weeps.

There is a terrible desperation to the increasingly pathetic rationalizations from the climate denial camp. This comes as no surprise if you take the long view; every single undone paradigm in history has died kicking and screaming, and our current petroleum paradigm is no different. The trick here is trying to figure out how we all make it to the new paradigm without dying right along with the old one, kicking, screaming or otherwise.

There will be a political price paid for these filthy paroxysms of deceit, and perhaps much sooner than one might think.

I’ve been on the planet for almost five decades now, barely an eyeblink in the context of climate, I know. I’ve spent virtually all those years in the Atlantic northeast, a region not easily confused with the tropics, and I have paid close attention over the years to both weather and climate ever since the words “ozone layer” insinuated themselves into my consciousness when I was a boy.

“Polling shows that US voters not only understand climate science, but more and more are increasingly worried about it,” writes Anna Fahey for the Sightline Institute, “including hefty shares of moderate Republicans and Independents. A Pew Research Center study confirms that millennial generation voters — ages 22 to 37 this election season — are considerably more liberal than older Americans. What’s more, that group now represents 28 percent of the US adult population. These voters are considerably more likely to support climate action and the Congressional candidates who talk them up.”

With the last of the special elections now behind us, the midterm election season begins in earnest. The political prediction machine will find its fifth gear and speed its guesswork way to November, lobbing presumptions and suppositions as it goes. How much weight the prognosticators give to climate change voters will likely depend on how much time they spend watching their own networks or reading their own newspapers. The climate voters are out there, and their time has come.

I rolled the recycling to the curb this past Monday morning and was struck by the silence. It was just before 9 am, and my little town should have been a bustling hive of new-week activity. Not so, not after yet another grim weather report. They were talking about the temperature reaching 95 degrees, a 70+ dew point level and an overall heat index of 100-110, again.

The sun was barely over the tree line and I could already sense the invisible steel plate of the day’s looming heat pressing down. Even the sky was the wrong color. The only relief would come with another muscular band of thunderstorms, flooded streets and toppled trees. It felt as if the town itself was like some tiny, crouched woodland animal who just felt the shadow of a hawk flit by.

If the silence was any clue, I wasn’t alone in my sense of foreboding. Something has gone badly wrong, and all that quiet felt like a clue. Call it the sound of the climate change voter, waiting out the hawks and the heat and the flames and the floods for November. Every election from now on will bear our mark. That is the future, too.