One thing I didn't see mentioned here, lithium brine extraction has some pretty serious environmental downsides. Finding all that lithium will be a win if/when its extracted and usable, actually extracting it is a different story.
I hear people complain about this, but they never place it in context with the damage from, say, iron or copper mining. I've done lots of web searches, read lots of articles, and there's never definitive measures of harm or comparisons to what current mining does. In a standard f150, how much damage is done from mining? How much damage comes from oil extraction compared to the one-time cost to extract lithium?
If we want to decrease our impact on the environment we need to stop using so much energy and so many resources, period. Chasing the next miracle cure, in this case lithium batteries for energy storage, we can easily run down that path picking up all the ecological damage of lithium mining and new manufacturing only to find that there are new problems and we're not much better off, we simply have different problems and a similar level if environmental damage as if had we stayed on the original path.
Now that doesn't mean I don't have hope for alternative energies or think we should decrease dependence on nonrenewable sources. I do like the promise of wind, solar, nuclear. etc and also think we should be killing off non-renewables as quickly as possible. I just hope we don't attempt to treat environmental impact as a zero sum game, signing off on more damage based on not exceeding the damage caused by current systems. I also hope we don't stick to a consistent growth of 2-3% in annual energy consumption, its no coincidence that number matches GDP targets and its unsustainable.