Except all those dire predictions turned out be wrong. We didn't run out of food or resources, and birth rates have now declined in almost every country in the world. Population growth is basically now a complete non-issue. In retrospect, ignoring the Paul Ehrlichs of the world turned out to be the right move - a far cry from mankind's greatest shortcoming.

If we run out of lithium we'll figure something else out, just like we would for any other resource.

That's a fine saying but even at 20% YoY increases in lithium usage, we'd still have 35 years or known reserves -- without any increase in exploration or recycling.

As oil & gas have shown, if there's exponential demand for a naturally occurring element, we'll definitely find ways to pull more of it out of the ground.

"Everybody who has ever claimed that something is doomed because of an exponential function was wrong."

Increases in known reserves can also be exponential.

The known reserves are 13 million tonnes. However lithium is the 25th most abundant element and you get 20mg of it for every kg of crust, so there is a lot more to find.

"The greatest shortcoming of exponential forecasting is the S-curve."