In the grand, suffocating theater of human folly, few things are as grimly hilarious as a government deciding that the desire to not choke to death is an act of sedition. We turn our weary eyes to India, where the Enforcement Directorate (ED)—a bureaucratic hammer that views every problem as a nail made of foreign currency—has raided the home of environmental activists Harjeet Singh and Jyoti Awasthi. Their alleged crime? Undermining the “national interest” by campaigning for a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty. Yes, you read that correctly. In the warped logic of the modern nation-state, trying to stop the planet from turning into a deep-fried cinder is now a conspiracy against the sovereign right to suffocate one's own citizens.

Let us pause to appreciate the exquisite absurdity of this moment. The police didn't kick down doors to stop a sex trafficking ring, or to apprehend a corporate fraudster bilking the populace out of billions, or to arrest the politicians whose incompetence has turned New Delhi’s air into a chewable solid. No. The heavy hand of the law came down upon the founders of ‘Satat Sampada’ (Nature Forever), presumably because the very concept of “forever” is an insult to a political class that cannot think past the next election cycle or the next quarterly earnings report from the coal lobby.

The specific accusation is that these two individuals received roughly £500,000 to advocate for this treaty. The horror! The scandal! Someone was paid to write policy papers and hold seminars instead of buying politicians or bribing regulators! In the grand casino of global corruption, £500,000 is a rounding error on a rounding error. It is the amount of money a mid-tier oil executive spills on his tie during a power lunch. Yet, the Indian state acts as if this sum constitutes a foreign invasion force. It is a classic misdirection: focus the public’s rage on the “foreign influence” of environmentalism, so they don’t notice the domestic influence of industrial oligarchs poisoning their water supply.

We must dissect the phrase “undermining the national interest.” It is the favorite shield of scoundrels and authoritarians worldwide. What, pray tell, is the national interest here? Is it in the national interest to have lung capacity reduced to that of a pug? Is it in the national interest to watch crop yields vanish under heatwaves that melt asphalt? Apparently, yes. To the bureaucratic mind, the “national interest” is purely an economic metric, measured in the extraction of resources and the burning of carbon. If you suggest that perhaps we shouldn’t burn everything we dig up, you are attacking the economy. You are anti-development. You are, effectively, a terrorist armed with a graph showing rising global temperatures.

This raid is not an anomaly; it is the standard operating procedure for a species determined to commit suicide while arguing over the seating arrangements. The Right views environmentalists as saboteurs of industry, pesky gnats buzzing around the glorious machinery of capitalism. The Left views them as useful props for photo ops, only to abandon them the moment real policy requires offending a donor. In this case, the Indian authorities have decided to skip the pretense and go straight to intimidation. By framing the reception of funds for advocacy as money laundering or some nefarious foreign plot, they delegitimize the argument itself. It’s not about the climate anymore; it’s about “procedural irregularities.” It is the banality of evil filed in triplicate.

Of course, Singh and Awasthi have called the allegations “baseless, biased and misleading.” One assumes they are shocked. One assumes they thought that if they just presented enough data, enough rational arguments, the system would correct itself. How quaint. They failed to realize that the system is not broken; it is working exactly as designed. The system is designed to protect the status quo at all costs, even if the status quo is a death spiral. The Enforcement Directorate is merely the immune system of a cancerous body attacking the chemotherapy.

What makes this specific instance so violently boring is its predictability. Every rising power repeats the same mistakes of the falling empires before them. The West burned coal until their skies turned black, then pivoted to lecturing the rest of the world while outsourcing their pollution. Now, India asserts its “right” to burn the same dinosaur bones, and anyone who points out that the atmosphere doesn't care about historical fairness is labeled a traitor. The narrative is locked in a death grip: Development equals pollution. Clean air equals poverty. If you want a livable planet, you are clearly an agent of a foreign power trying to keep the nation down.

So, the police raid the house. They seize the laptops. They freeze the accounts. They make an example of the do-gooders. Meanwhile, the mercury rises, the glaciers retreat, and the air quality index hits numbers that shouldn't exist outside of a laboratory accident. But at least the “national interest” has been protected from the scourge of people who want a future. Sleep soundly, citizens. The government has saved you from the threat of a non-proliferation treaty. Now take a deep breath, if you can.