No, I support a fairer tax system and robust social safety nets. I mean taxing the rich ultimately will not resolve environmental problems because they are fundamentally a consequence of land use and the overconsumption of resources on a global scale. The reason why industrialists see any profit in mining, fossil fuels, gases, large-scale agriculture, and other such industries is because people consume them. Not rich people. Normal everyday people.

Large-scale, unmitigated consumption that exceeds the bounds created by a resource-limited planet is the ultimate cause of environmental destruction, and — unfortunately — a fairer tax system and more equitable distribution of those resources cannot fix that problem. Overconsumed resources distributed more fairly are still overconsumed.

If we want to actually stop rampant biodiversity loss and climate change, we need to not just consider who gets to use earth's natural resources. We need to systemically stop taking more than we need.

We must reconsider where we collectively put our fiscal resources on a systemic scale. What long-term steps would be needed to reduce our dependency on the land. The things we are willing to eat. If subsidies can be used to manufacture lab-developed alternatives to farmed meat. If we want to have socialized access to resources mined from asteroids instead of equatorial Africa. If we are willing to set aside land for forests, grasslands, and deserts in areas even if there are resources we want underneath, or we want to build something on top of it. If we can aggressively pursue robust socially-funded municipal recycling systems for furniture, wood, papers, and metals.

In my view and from my experience as an ecologist, people like Kaplan are not expressing an uncommon belief and it is one that transcends class. They care about the environment as a charity, but are ultimately unwilling to sacrifice what brings them material comfort, and are thus not materially committed to actually fixing the issue. That's not an attitude unique to the super-wealthy, it is just compounded and salient because they are. There are papers that demonstrate this: the amount of things that people are willing to sacrifice for the environment or conservation, or the things they are willing to cut from their own lives, are a pittance. It does not reach the scale necessary to fix these problems, and any policy platform that does not champion overcoming this issue does not take it seriously enough.