Democratic platform takes environmental moralizing too far

Scooting ever leftward, the Democratic Party overworks an annoying habit of liberalism in the environmental section of its campaign platform.

The habit is to overdress policy positions in the weighty vestments of morality.

So, for example, climate change becomes more than a complicated phenomenon meriting concern from scientists and policy-makers. It must be a matter of faith, about which the only acknowledged positions are righteous belief and damnable doubt.

It's on this issue that the Democratic platform steps beyond tiresome moralizing.

Platform writers point out that "low-income and minority communities" suffer disproportionately from harm caused by pollution and the extreme weather assumed to result from climate change.

"Simply put," they add, "this is environmental racism."

Now, racism is a serious problem. So are environmental degradation and poverty. All deserve serious attention.

But conscripting passions of one especially moral problem in service to political exertions of another hardly represents serious problem-solving. It amounts instead to propagandizing.

What's more, just as the poor suffer disproportionately from environmental problems--and all problems--the wealthy profit disproportionately from policy responses.

The effect goes beyond promotion by climate crusaders, such as former US Vice-Pres. Al Gore, of green-technology companies from which they make money.

Tax credits for climate-friendly behavior favor rich people, too.

Researchers at the Energy Institute in the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, reported that finding in a study last year.

Severin Borenstein and Lucas Davis examined tax returns to see who benefited from the $18 billion in federal income tax credits taken over the past decade for weatherizing homes, installing solar panels, buying electric vehicles, and making other clean-energy investments.

"The bottom three income quintiles have received about 10% of all credits, while the top quintile has received about 60%," they reported. For electric vehicles, the top quintile got 90% of all credits.

The analysts expressed proper concern about "distributional impacts" evident in the data.

Commendably, however, they didn't make a racial issue of their findings.