Nasty psychological perception trick: smoke is hardly visible compared to quarries and landfills, and there is visibly more atmosphere volume than ground surface.
Personally, my issue with EV battery (and electronics!) lifecycles is for precisely the opposite reason - the quarries and landfills in question are far far away from the places where EVs are actually used. All that most people will see is a local reduction in air pollution, so unless the topic is discussed, the general perception will be that all is well.
Also for some reason journalists have a lot of stock photos to choose from for quarries and landfills, but I guess stock photographers just don't like making trips to say Galveston, TX and extremely visible, devastating "beauty" of oil refining.