Progressive tax reform could be an important tool to fight rising inequality, but political actors often struggle to gain support for it based on redistributive arguments. People typically favor equal tax burdens and are reluctant to accept compensatory arguments that justify progressive reforms. In this paper, we explore whether compensatory arguments based on the climate crisis, which frame the unequal carbon emissions among the rich and poor as unfair, offer an alternative to boost support for progressive taxation. To study this, we use survey experiments in Germany to estimate the causal effect of exposure to the climate frame. We first use a factorial survey experiment to assess the impact of pro- and counter-narratives on support for the reintroduction of the wealth tax. The survey experiment tests the effect of a climate frame, which links greenhouse gas emissions to a higher tax burden, as well as an inequality frame, making a fairness-based case for the introduction of the wealth tax. We also combine these frames with a counter-frame, suggesting that wealth taxes threaten economic prosperity. We then follow up with a budgetary exercise and a conjoint survey experiment to gauge how respondents would like to spend revenues from a wealth tax. This allows us to test whether the climate frame increases support for government spending to fight the climate crisis, and which type of spending. Overall, the paper investigates the effectiveness of climate crisis-based arguments for progressive taxation in a politically charged environment, shedding light on the nexus between taxation, climate change, and public opinion.