Oligarchs don't go around cutting forests for fun, they profit from "environmental destruction" because other people need it to live and are ready to give their money in exchange for its results and receive money for performing it.
Communist countries do as much damage as capitalist ones, and even hunter-gatherers did a huge amount of damage, so you are looking for solution at a wrong place.
Which of current trends do you think justify your pessimistic outlook? We are not in a particularly bad state compared to hundred years ago, and recently we didn't cause more extinctions than we caused as hunter-gatherers. With genetic editing we are working to create much more efficient crops, in some places we learned how to use technology to drastically reduce use of pesticides, area, and water in agriculture (see Netherlands and Israel), gene drives that would eliminate main pest species are going to allow us to further reduce usage of pesticides, and we are learning to grow fish and algae in the ocean instead of simply exploiting wild populations. We are even working on restoring long dead species like mammoths, so i'd say there is every reason to be optimistic about the future.
Communist countries do as much damage as capitalist ones, and even hunter-gatherers did a huge amount of damage, so you are looking for solution at a wrong place.
Which of current trends do you think justify your pessimistic outlook? We are not in a particularly bad state compared to hundred years ago, and recently we didn't cause more extinctions than we caused as hunter-gatherers. With genetic editing we are working to create much more efficient crops, in some places we learned how to use technology to drastically reduce use of pesticides, area, and water in agriculture (see Netherlands and Israel), gene drives that would eliminate main pest species are going to allow us to further reduce usage of pesticides, and we are learning to grow fish and algae in the ocean instead of simply exploiting wild populations. We are even working on restoring long dead species like mammoths, so i'd say there is every reason to be optimistic about the future.