PARIS — At the Paris climate talks this week, California was the star on the world's green carpet, despite not actually having a seat at the negotiating table.

Seemingly at every turn there was a news story about California, or a crowd of people taking pictures of a California official, or Gov. Jerry Brown chillaxin' with someone important. California is not a country, of course, but for a little while there it kind of felt like one. In the amount of attention it received, the influence it seemed to have, and, yes, the level of celebrity it commanded, California soared above most of the actual countries at the global climate talks.

One of the biggest reasons for the state's outsize influence at the talks was that it came with a bag full of ideas that are as sunny as the state itself. During a conversation Thursday with BuzzFeed News in the Paris suburb where the talks are taking place, Kevin de León, California Senate President Pro Tempore, outlined one of the most powerful of those ideas: economic growth and climate action that go hand in hand.

"We have successfully decoupled carbon from GDP," he said.

De León was referring to a system built on California's cap and trade program — surely the largest feather in the state's large climate cap. The details of the program are complex, but basically the program limits, or "caps," the amount of pollution big industries can emit, but also lets them pay to go over those limits. And combined with California's thriving economy, it offers the promise that fighting climate change doesn't have to mean sacrificing prosperity.

The program was a hot topic at the climate talks. Brown's busy schedule gave him plenty of opportunities to speak about cap and trade, and his evangelizing is what earned California much of its attention and influence. For example, at one gathering in the conference's "blue zone," an area open exclusively to people with credentials, Brown's audience swelled to standing room only.

On another afternoon, also in the blue zone, this reporter ducked into a random press room only to discover several Canadian officials talking excitedly about linking their own cap and trade programs to California. The moment emphasized the very real international coalition building California has been doing in recent years — something that was on display this week and which made it feel as much like a nation as a state.

It also didn't hurt that California's last governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, spent several days at the conference, surrounded by media and touting many of the same ideas as Brown. In many ways, in fact, Schwarzenegger was the perfect embodiment of the state at the conference: flashy, in demand, super buff, and right in the middle of the Venn diagram of politics and celebrity. It's tough for anyone, and especially smaller nations, to match Schwarzenegger's star power, and in many ways he seemed to be there first and foremost as a Californian.