Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with California Gov. Jerry Brown at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on July 6, 2017 Li Xueren | Xinhua | AP

Having recently enjoyed the "rockets' red glare" on July 4, our Declaration of Independence came to mind as a way to understand the evolving, and distinctly different, approaches to addressing climate change that are emerging in the United States. As several states take climate-change matters into their own hands, firmly believing their environment, public health and economies will be much better off by addressing the problem head-on, it's easy to imagine them sending a letter to a president whose administration has been openly hostile to any attempts to limit greenhouse gases. It begins, "When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them ..." Of course, states' rights have long been contentious on many issues — slavery and the Civil War being the most obvious break between our levels of government in America. Since then, people have taken to the streets, and it was their state leaders who subsequently took the first action, on issues as diverse as marriage equality and clean air. But the climate debate is different in two fundamental ways.

Climate is a new kind of states' rights issue

State governments are not just acting for and among themselves, but they are essentially brokering international treaties with foreign governments.

Schwarzenegger went on to talk about the economic reasons that states and cities are bucking the feds on climate policies. "California has the strictest environmental laws, but at the same time we are number one in economic growth in America," he said. The numbers bear him out. One recent study showed the economically depressed (and largely conservative, Trump-voting) Central Valley of California has reaped over $13 billion of economic benefits from state climate policies, including renewable energy and energy efficiency projects, the cap-and-trade market on carbon emissions, and climate-friendly agricultural practices. By contrast, President Trump rolled back the Clean Power Plan and regulations that prevented coal mine waste from being dumped into streams and rivers that supply drinking water to the miners he has so often claimed to "love," moves that only serve to protect the profits of major energy companies. He continues to be a vocal supporter of burning more coal, despite overwhelming evidence against the economics — a Harvard study estimates the cost of coal to the U.S. economy at up to $500 billion/year and many of those costs burden states that are not taking climate change seriously (in conservative Trump-voting regions of the south and east) with things like public health costs and crop damage.