What’s worse: lithium mining or oil extraction? Viral social media posts suggest misleading answers to complex question.

In mid-August 2024, dozens of Facebook accounts posted a meme, leading to more than 500,000 interactions (i.e., comments, likes, and shares) in less than a week. The meme features two photos: one of an unidentified mine pit and another of a piece of machinery used to pump oil situated in a green field. Two lines of text overlay the photos, which read ‘lithium mining for electric cars’ and ‘oil drilling for gas cars’, respectively. Although the post captions claim the meme is ‘just a joke’, many social media users thought otherwise. Regardless of the intention of these rather vague posts, the underlying claim seemed clear as day to users in the comments: ‘lithium mining is worse for the environment than extracting oil’. For example, one user commented: “This meme is spot on! Not a joke.” Below we will investigate these photos and the scientific evidence behind the claims that they – in effect – support.

This pair of images – and several others – are a recurring meme online. They often take a complex topic – such as climate change or environmental impacts – and simplify it using cherry-picked photos and very brief text (e.g., a line or two) to make or suggest certain claims. However, one clever trick they employ is to not explicitly state the claim, but heavily imply it – leading the audience to an ‘aha’ moment, where they draw the desired conclusion themselves. As pointed out above, the recently shared meme had this effect, as evidenced by the debates that ensued in the comments about the environmental impacts of lithium mining (and electric vehicles) vs. oil extraction (and gas vehicles). Before we explore the scientific evidence for these impacts, we will first investigate the photos and uncover what they truly show.

The original photo of the mine pit was sourced from a research paper linked here – note that the photo was flipped in the meme, making it harder to trace back to the original source. Using this paper, we pinned down that the mine pit is ‘Corta Atalaya’ located in the Rio Tinto Mining Basin in Spain. It is one of the largest open-pit mines in Europe and – when it was in operation – was one of the largest in the world. However, not only was the photo flipped before circulating on social media, but so were the facts: Corta Atalaya is a copper mine, not a lithium mine. This was confirmed using three different sources including the paper linked above, Google Earth (Figure 1), and a separate research paper that describes the geology of the pit, linked here. Based on these sources, no lithium mining has been conducted at Corta Atalaya.

The ‘oil drilling’ photo – also flipped from the original (linked here) – shows an oil pumpjack located in Midland, Texas in the Texas Permian basin. Pumpjacks are machines used to pump and extract oil from underground deposits through perforated wells. Pumpjacks are not used for ‘oil drilling’ as the meme on social media suggests; oil drilling is the act of drilling a borehole into soil or rock – a step that occurs before oil can be pumped out. As shown in Figure 2, much of the oil-pumping process occurs underground and is thus hidden in the photos circulating on social media, providing little context for what is shown. Additionally, this photo is not an accurate representation of the impacts of oil extraction as it shows only one part of the multi-step process it takes to extract, transport, and refine oil into useful products. This process has had numerous negative environmental impacts, which we will detail later.

Overall, the photos are misleading because they have been cherry-picked to paint a stark contrast between the impacts of mineral extraction (e.g., lithium mining) and oil extraction. The photos suggest that ‘mining creates barren, altered landscapes’, and oil extraction ‘allows for green, life-bearing landscapes’. However, this overlooks numerous impacts of the oil industry including the land contamination that follows accidents like the The Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010. This incident resulted in an 87-day release of oil, gas, and dispersants, impacting 11,000 square kilometers (km2) of ocean surface and 2,000 km of coastline with oil^[1]. It is estimated that during each of the 87 days, roughly 1.5 million gallons of oil released into the ocean, totaling to an estimated 134 million gallons, according to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA). This was one incident of course, but helps paint a very different picture of the scale of impacts that can occur compared to a photo of an oil pumpjack and a couple of cows.

With greater clarity on what is actually shown in these photos – and what is missing – we can now explore what some of the actual impacts are of these practices and share some photos with greater context.

Oil extraction and lithium mining both have negative impacts on the environment. But how do they compare?

As we noted earlier, oil production and lithium mining both have environmental and climate impacts. To summarize all of them would be quite the endeavor – especially if you account for their end use as fuel in cars and components of batteries, respectively. As such, in this review we will focus on providing some of the key impacts of these industries to highlight why it is misleading to compare the two using photos without proper context.

Examples of fossil fuel impacts

Contrary to what is suggested in viral memes, the exploration, production, and use of fossil fuels (i.e., oil and gas) has caused numerous negative environmental and climate impacts^[2,3]. From a climate perspective, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), explains that “unsustainable and unequal energy and land use as well as more than a century of burning fossil fuels have unequivocally caused global warming … This has led to widespread adverse impacts and related losses and damages to nature and people”^[4]. Figure 3 shows how greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel use have rapidly increased over recent decades. The various consequences of climate change have been covered extensively in past Science Feedback reviews (linked here, here, here, and here).

The IPCC explains that “climate change has caused substantial damages, and increasingly irreversible losses, in terrestrial, freshwater, cryospheric, and coastal and open ocean ecosystems”^[4].

Fossil fuel extraction, transport, and use has also led to more direct environmental impacts. For example, fossil fuels can contaminate the environment through spills and releases at both large and small scales. For example, there are larger spills such as the ~134 million gallon oil release during the The Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010, and also smaller, but more numerous, spills that occur all over the world from improper use and storage of fossil fuels. For example, in Brussaard et al. (2018), the authors explain that “On average, 10,000 billion tonne miles of crude oil are transported annually over sea, and an estimated 5,000 ton per year were spilled during the period 2010–2014 as a result of accidents, cleaning operations or other causes”^[5]. These authors also explain that while the number of big spills has been reduced by improved technical standards, “less well known are spills that comprise <7 ton and yet represent an estimated 80% (by number) of all recorded spills: many of such smaller spills may go unnoticed and remain unreported”^[5]. These spills can have a number of ecotoxicological effects on wildlife^[5], and on land they can contaminate soil and groundwater resources^[6] (Figure 4).

In Wei et al. (2022), the authors explain that “accidental oil leaks have caused severe pollution. It has been estimated that approximately 40% of petroleum pipelines globally have exceeded their project life (ca. 20 years); and, in the United States alone, more than 2.5 billion gallons of petroleum are spilled into the environment every year”^[6]. Additionally, as explained by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, air quality can also be affected because  “when fossil fuels are burned, they release nitrogen oxides into the atmosphere, which contribute to the formation of smog and acid rain”. In summary, there are a number of environmental and climate impacts that result from the extraction and use of fossil fuels – none of which are portrayed in the photo shared in the recent viral memes on social media.

Examples of lithium mining impacts

However, lithium mining also has environmental impacts. But before we explore them: what is lithium and why do we extract it? As explained in Vera et al. (2023), “Lithium is a fundamental raw material for the renewable energy transition owing to its widespread use in rechargeable batteries and the deployment of electric vehicles^[7-10]”^[11]. Currently, there are only two sources from which we extract lithium: hard-rock ore (i.e., rocks containing lithium that can be extracted) and continental brines, which are underground reservoirs with saline water rich in dissolved lithium^[11].

Lithium resources are more abundant in continental brines than hard-rock ores^[11], and according to a 2018 study, “2/3 of the world production of lithium is extracted from brines, a practice that evaporates on average half a million litres of brine per ton of lithium carbonate”^[12]. Obtaining lithium from continental brines causes large amounts of water – i.e., up to 90% of the original water content – to be lost to evaporation, which raises concerns about sustainability. Brines are pumped from underground reservoirs into open air ponds, in which over 90% of the original water content is lost through evaporation^[11] (Figure 5).

Lithium mining also produces waste, as explained in Vera et al. (2023), “over 90% of the salts other than LiCl in the original brines spontaneously crystallize in the ponds and are considered waste”^[11]. Of course, CO₂ emissions are also involved in both types of lithium mining and in the process of making the batteries the lithium is used in. However, the EPA explains that “the greenhouse gas emissions associated with an electric vehicle over its lifetime are typically lower than those from an average gasoline-powered vehicle, even when accounting for manufacturing”. Greater context for this comparison is also shared an article from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Climate Portal:

“Within the United States, the transportation sector produces the largest share of greenhouse gas emissions—nearly one-third of the country’s total emissions. Most of those emissions—about 80%—come from tailpipe exhaust, which could be completely eliminated if all vehicles were battery-powered. Taking a single gas-powered passenger vehicle off the road and replacing it with an electric one prevents 4.6 tons of CO₂ on average from entering the atmosphere every year. If we compare this with the upper range of producing a Tesla Model 3 battery – 16 tons of CO₂ – driving a Tesla for four years means that we’re saving more CO₂ than we’re producing by making the battery.”

 

In conclusion, both lithium mining and oil production have environmental and climate impacts. However, viral memes that have circulated on social media ‘comparing’ the two are misleading as they present cherry-picked photos with little to no context. Furthermore, some of these memes present photos that are inaccurate (e.g., showing a copper mine and calling it a lithium mine, showing an oil pumpjack and referring to it as ‘oil drilling’, etc.). Comparing the impacts of these industries and use of their products is far more complex than a simple meme image can convey. While this review helps to add more context, a future article will be necessary to do a more comprehensive comparison of the relative impacts.

REFERENCES

• 1 – Kujawinski et al. (2020) The first decade of scientific insights from the Deepwater Horizon oil release. Nature.
• 2 – IPCC (2021). Sixth Assessment Report.
• 3 – Khoo and Tan (2006) Environmental Impact Evaluation of Conventional Fossil Fuel Production (Oil and Natural Gas) and Enhanced Resource Recovery with Potential CO2 Sequestration. Energy & Fuels.
• 4 – IPCC (2023) Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report.
• 5 – Brussaard et al. (2016) Immediate ecotoxicological effects of short-lived oil spills on marine biota. Nature Communications.
• 6 – Wei et al. (2022) Recent progress on in-situ chemical oxidation for the remediation of petroleum contaminated soil and groundwater. Journal of Hazardous Materials.
• 7 – Trahey et al. (2020) Energy storage emerging: a perspective from the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
• 8 – Koohi-Fayegh and Rosen (2020) A review of energy storage types, applications and recent developments. Journal of Energy Storage.
• 9 – Dehghani-Sanij et al. (2019) Study of energy storage systems and environmental challenges of batteries. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews.
• 10 – Olivetti et al. (2017) Lithium-ion battery supply chain considerations: analysis of potential bottlenecks in critical metals. Joule.
• 11 – Vera et al. (2023) Environmental impact of direct lithium extraction from brines. Nature Reviews Earth and Environment.
• 12 – Flexer et al. (2018) Lithium recovery from brines: A vital raw material for green energies with a potential environmental impact in its mining and processing. Science of the Total Environment.