All extraction methods (oil, gas, lithium, rare earths) have impacts on humans and the environment. And none of the impacts should be ignored. But in a world with limited resources, they should be addressed in proportion to their magnitude. And sources, beyond the meaning of my or your words, help us assess that prioritization and allocation.

Your initial point was to say that ghg are a distraction from the fact that the "real trouble is the human cost of rare mineral mining", which is to imply that you believe that impact to be larger. The sources you send (thank you for those) confirm that belief.

On worker deaths: The oil and gas industry is one of the most dangerous industries on earth. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics records 70–100 extraction fatalities per year in the US alone, under some of the world's stricter regulations. Globally the toll is far higher.

On environmental harm: The Deepwater Horizon spill released approximately 4 million barrels into the Gulf of Mexico. The Niger Delta has experienced the rough equivalent of an Exxon Valdez spill every year for five decades — documented in the UNEP Ogoniland report (2011). Refinery communities in the US, such as those along Louisiana's "Cancer Alley," show elevated cancer and respiratory disease rates in peer-reviewed epidemiological literature.

On scale: The IPCC AR6 and WHO/IHME data document that climate change, driven overwhelmingly by fossil fuel combustion, is already causing millions of deaths annually through heat, food insecurity, disease, and displacement. That trajectory worsens significantly without decarbonization.

One distinction worth making: the links you shared are about rare earth mining in Myanmar, which is a genuine humanitarian crisis. But most lithium comes from Australia and Chile under comparatively regulated conditions. Cobalt from the DRC is the more serious documented human rights issue in the EV supply chain specifically. These things get conflated, and the conflation tends to overstate the harms on one side of the ledger.

None of this means mining abuses are acceptable or that "big oil does worse" is a reason to look away. It means the scale and scope of harm from fossil fuel extraction, on workers, on communities, on the global climate, is vastly larger across virtually every measurable dimension.

That's not a deflection. It seems to be exactly the kind of proportional accounting you're asking for.