An historically divisive election led many Americans to conclude that the newly elected president did not represent them, nor did he have their best interests at heart. His stated objectives struck to the heart of what these Americans valued and challenged their very way of life. While coastal liberals in 21st century America seldom identify with the people of the Confederate States of America, they have the above in common. Californians are now beholden to a president who garnered less than one in three votes in our state, who has threatened millions of our people with his environmental and immigration policies. Despite this, for California to follow the example set by the Old South in 1860 would be disastrous, not just for our people, but for the world. Political dissolution is almost impossible without violence, and comes at the cost of collaboration on economic, environmental, and human rights issues.

By dissolving the United States, rather than working to reform its existing structures and countering President Trump on existing legal grounds, we would give him carte blanche to suspend legal restraints in the name of preserving the Union. Lincoln’s raising of militias in border states, suspension of habeas corpus, and institution of the draft across the North demonstrate the power that a president with majorities in both houses of Congress can wield when the integrity of the Republic is at stake. Even if the highest office were not currently occupied by an untested and unpredictable leader, no president can politically afford to let the union dissolve on his watch. In 1860, fully 60% of the nation’s GDP was based in cotton, either through sale of the raw product to Great Britain or through textile manufacturing in the North. This created an economic imperative (on top of the political) to keep the states in the Union, yet it did not stop General Sherman from laying waste to the very fields that produced this crop. California’s substantial contributions to the US economy today will likewise fail to shield us from violent retribution, and will further impel the US to prevent our departure. In practical terms, the power of the federal government relative to non-federal entities is vastly more asymmetric than in 1860 – California could not hope to mount a military defense to counter the United States. Moreover, to pursue Californian independence would focus political and economic energy on resolving this dispute rather than collaborating on issues in which all North Americans have a shared interest.

Economic and political integration support collaboration that increases efficiency and accelerates growth. One study conducted by European economists found that, on average, member nations of the EU enjoyed 12% greater GDP growth since joining the union than they would have without having joined. If we undergo the reverse and exit the Union, we would introduce commercial hurdles on the California border where none previously existed, needlessly adding complexity to one of the largest and most lucrative trade partnerships on Earth. Crafting the counterfactual is challenging, given the breadth of factors at play, but it’s clear that free movement of labor, capital, and ideas around Europe have opened up opportunities for millions of Europeans and created a basis for cooperation on other issues, like climate change. As the largest consumer of the world’s energy – both overall and per-capita – the United States bears an enormous responsibility to reduce its carbon output and limit its impact on the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans. In addition to distracting from the urgent need to develop a North America-wide policy for reforming our energy economy, Californian secession would remove one of the most powerful voices for environmental stewardship from the the American political discourse. Secession would diminish our ability to influence American energy production and consumption practices in the face of a crisis that demands unprecedented collaboration.

Climate Change is not the only issue which, without Californian influence, might fall by the wayside in a diminished United States. Such a challenge to federal authority would also undermine a variety of civil rights guarantees which have been won by prevailing upon the federal government to intercede in state affairs. Indeed, most expansions of civil rights in the United States – women’s suffrage, the end of Jim Crow, the right to a safe and legal abortion, the right of all people to marry the person of their choice – resulted from activists appealing to the federal government to intervene and change state policy. To cede our voice in the American legislature in the name of Californian liberty is to renounce our responsibility to marginalized communities across the North American continent. Beyond removing a key Progressive pillar from American politics, we would fundamentally weaken the federal government, and therefore diminish its capacity to guarantee civil rights in the face of newly emboldened states. One need look no further than North Carolina, whose voting laws were struck down by the 4th circuit court for disenfranchising black voters “with surgical precision” to see the willingness of certain political elements to diminish civil rights within their own states.

However tempting, given recent political events, California must not abdicate its place within the United States of America. To do so would incur enormous short-term costs – at best a lengthy, complex restructuring of our relationship with the US, and at worst all-out war. Our doing so would undermine hard-won consensus on civil rights, and would hamstring one of the largest economies on Earth in its efforts to deal with the greatest environmental crisis in the history of our species. More broadly, expending political and economic resources in pursuit of dissolution necessarily foregoes opportunities to collaborate and sows acrimony between groups whose disagreements could otherwise be worked out using existing structures. Thanks to technological advances, population growth, and the now-understood environmental externalities of industrialization, our world is increasingly interconnected and interdependent. Despite the fact that larger-scale cooperation necessitates compromise with partners who may not share all of our values, to resort instead to fragmentation and dissolution reduces our capacity to address issues that impact us all.