This comment section is full of people criticising the tone, the writing style and the "injection of personal politics" to avoid facing their compliciteness in fundamentally unethical businesses.
In this case, the author emphasized too much on his/her own belief, which erodes into the integrity of the valuable facts he provided. His/her personal opinions turned an exposé into an editorial.
Convincing people and trying to organize are essential in affecting change.
For an essay, in my opinion, it stays in rather neutral territory, making some uncontroversial observations that climate change is bad, that big oil plays a major role it, and expressing some enthusiasm for standing up against partnerships with big oil, but not otherwise making strong claims about what should be done.
I understand what you're saying, and actually kind of agree with you (that people are commenting minutiae to avoid an elephant in the room), I just don't know if there's a solution.