I've never liked the arguments which end up shilling for or giving a pass to the fossil fuel industry, which amounts to destroying our planet. Humans need clean air and water to survive. No matter how indispensable one might think oil and plastics are, if humans destroy themselves because of their usage, then it was not worth it. Just a relatively few humans getting rich from destroying the planet and the future generations of humanity, means it wasn't worth it.

There are alternative ways to make plastics (https://hempplastic.com/), and hemp is just one example. It's not to say that all kinds of plastics are easily or quickly replaced with alternatives, but it is to say that it's possible to find alternatives. And probably the greater effort and urgency to find alternatives, without interference from oil companies, the greater variety of replacements there will be, and sooner.

Maybe there is some minimum point where we just can't replace fossil fuels for a particular product or industry, but much better to get to that point, where we minimally rely on fossil fuels. Let's first make every effort to find alternatives, before saying that's the case. I have a strong suspicion, we could probably reduce reliance far more that many think or want us to discover.

Another sneaky part of the pro fossil fuel argument, is since replacing them is hard, let's be really lazy about it and allow them to pollute the air and water at will or for many generations more. As if we or our Earth can afford such. If anything, the correct answer is that greater effort should be made to replace fossil fuels as much as and as soon as possible, because of the great harm they are causing. We should not be lazy, because doing so might be our undoing.