Who killed alternatives to petrochemicals?

Am I right in thinking that oil-based technologies could have been avoided?
All that effort wasted sucking on liquid black earth from humans who claim ownership of the darkest part of the living body of us all.

I am surrounded by crude oil products. Plastics, pharmaceuticals, industrial and agricultural chemicals. Burning oil runs automobiles and produces electricity.

Since the first large power station was Tesla's hydroelectric Niagara Falls, why have we then moved on to destroying minerals? Why did we go from using sustainable agricultural processes by working with the ecosystem to growing mono-cultures with chemical pesticide derived from oil? People have always used plants for engineering until recently, now millions of people are employed by capitalists to discover uses for oil.

The wealthy own the land,
So the wealthy own the oil (costing next to nothing, they don't have to invest in people to get oil or care for the earth that produces it),
So the wealthy own all technology and invest only in those that use petrochemicals.
Thus making the land owners wealthier than the workers.

The article, Higher initial cost of alternative energy pays off later is a good example of naive understanding of the competitive market place:
The news article link above states that '[alternative energy] use requires greater expense than the one incurred by the use of oil. It is clear, however, that... this invention will be better for us in the long run.' Okay, that's why land owners put up money for chemical engineering plants so they can make more money from us buying their greasy products.
'Clearly, it wouldn't take too long before its price gets down to a very competitive level -- our free and competition-driven economic system dictates this.'
If alternatives are better, but jobs depend on oil, then a 'competition-driven economic system dictates' competition not cooperation for what 'will be better for us in the long run'.

Please consider watching Who Killed the Electric Car? (2006)

Tesla

Nikola Tesla (10 July 1856 – 7 January 1943)

Nikola Tesla learnt about Vedic philosophy from Swami Vivekananda

It seems to me that a sensible way to look at the world is as movement in a sea of energy, which we could call the aether (Akasha).

Maria Sesic from the Tesla museum claims Tesla prophesied that quantum mechanics and relativity theorists would enter into a crisis, "“Let the future tell the truth, and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I have really worked, is mine.”

- age of suppression not seen since Galileo

Peace can come only as a consequence of universal enlightenment.
- Nicola Tesla

Tesla

The 150th anniversary of Telsa's birth was July 2006. Tesla was an outsider to scientific institutions, who single-handedly created the 20th Century by being solely responsible for the discovery of alternating current and radio. He wanted his ideas to be used for the benefit of all mankind, but was prevented from doing so by corporations of the day, who had a massive financial incentive to discredit and ignore him. Tesla was suggesting the internet over 100 years ago and discovered the technology that makes it possible. Why don't we learn about Tesla in school?

Is it because it's a perfect example of how hierarchical institutions and capitalist incentives prevent technological development that benefit the poor or threaten the wealthy? Tesla achieved much, but have we are still missing him. In the UK we standardised our electric grid to run at 50Hz in 1926 and we're still using the same technology.