India has walked away from its bid to host the COP33 UN climate conference, and the world’s climate press has treated it as a footnote rather than the signal it is. India had spent years projecting a rising voice in the development of climate policy, and hosting a COP33 is the closest thing the bureaucracy has to a coronation. The notion that India should shackle its economy by adhering to restrictive climate policies, while its people still grapple with energy deficits, is illogical and morally indefensible. That is why India has expanded coal production and struck oil and gas deals with the United States and Persian Gulf producers. A country that the entire architecture of climate financing is supposedly built to help just declined to host the party.