By making individuals responsible for reducing pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, the oil industry is deflecting responsibility for making profound changes in their production practices.
I mean, fine. We'll likely need oil for lubrication for a long time, but my next car will be electric, and we're getting solar over this and the next year. They'll lose my contributions to their coffers, because fuck them.
They should be held accountable, but I'm not going to hem and haw waiting for them to do the right thing (or for the governments to get off their collective assess and do something about it).
Exactly, good for you. As individuals, we can choose to make things better, be a part of the solution, and have a big collective impact by making changes.
Bonus points are that it sends a signal to others which amplifies the impact, and also reduces the power of those large organisations who do bad, since our better actions often feed them less money.
We have vegetable oil for example and algaes can produce oil as well. So we do not need to dig for fossil fuel, there are alternatives for lubriaction and similar problems, were oil is very much needed.
Im not certain how well plant based alternatives work for the specific formulations needed for most lubricants, but honestly given the scale involved it doesn’t really matter if we use ground reserves. Most machines use gallons a year or decade, not per five minutes like cars.
Yeah, it's the mechanical properties of non-crude lubricants that's the issue. Maybe scientists could find a way to turn vegetable oil into industrial grease, but I have no idea if that's even possible.
But like you say, lubricants aren't the main problem; it has always been fossil fuels.