Because lithium extraction such a tiny aspect of everything, and replacing a huge and evil oil industry that has terrible effects on everything is like comparing an apple to an F-150.

One is so clearly worse that its not even really worth debating. And that's why very often the 'but what about lithium effect on the environment' is often broad up by car and oil lobbyist to gaslight people. That is the reason the person got downvoted.

But if want to know, lithium mining is a worse basically like mining any other hard rocket, cooper or whatever. There are some issues with brine mining but they are minor and very localized. As with all mining there is issues with local representation.

You should understand that there is a lot of astroturfing going on now with comments starting that EVs and batteries are terribly toxic and will be an huge environmental disaster. Those people never seem to acknowledge the counter arguments. Batteries use only a small amount of lithium (8-16kg per vehicle). There is some toxicity to lithium mining but it is not a particularly toxic element and the effects are localized. Once produced, the lithium in batteries can be recycled efficiently. We are not going to need millions of lithium mines.

The amount needed is a couple of orders of magnitude less than the amount of drilling sites needed for the toxic oil that we are current extracting and burning and that cannot be recycled in any meaningful way.

We are concerned for the environment and need to make trade offs to get the best outcome for the environment. So far, the small amount of lithium mines seems like a good trade off against large numbers of oil drills.

You are concern trolling. The negative effects of lithium mining and refining is completely trivial compared to the increasingly uninhabitable planet that more CO2 emissions will lead to.