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Just google "extracting lithium from seawater". I did not want to go into technical discussions but I am not talking about science fiction here.
So maybe it's easy to extract mountains of Lithium. Not really my point. You state that what is lacking out there is imagination, and I completely disagree. I think the opposite is the case: I see nothing but imagination, or what I call Fantasy. I'm totally in favor of whatever works. But when I can't get any gasoline to put in my car - and if things go the way I think they will in the ME then that should be this year, maybe even this spring - it won't help my situation at all to know that there's plenty of Lithium in the oceans.
Anyway, batteries are just a storage medium. Still have to generate that electricity somehow...
But sorting out "scientific imagination" from "science fiction imagination" is the whole purpose of our discussions here. In this case I knew there are feasible methods to extract Li from seawater which I had accepted with a good degree of certainty will be working for us.
The lack of imagination I find in the way the picture was described by the article. It basically assumed we will continue extracting and using Li the way we used to and did not allow for innovation at all. In contrast I am allowing innovation, being more or less agnostic on it - it may or may not work. But this is not the point - the point is that this is not the time to tell whether potential innovations will work or not. This is what the article was leading us to the end - kill all Li batteries, because you see Li is will run out.
How energy-intensive is the extraction process? That is the question that needs to be asked in order to make imagination connect with reality.