A bit of both. I'm trying to say that it's not so cut and dry. Making lithium batteries and thr mining of lithium is a messy business. It's not a panacea. We need to be honest and realistic about the costs of doing that business, and often we arent.
A chokehold on new mining of a crucial ore for renewables sounds like a terrible overall idea.
The lifecycle of the lithium that will come from this hypothetical mine is probably 20 years from now until the first time the material will be recycled.
The highly profitable recycling logistics will have been fully worked out a decade before it’s needed for a new mine’s output.
I was responding to when you said “before we make any more big, environmentally hazardous mines”.
The recycling effort is highly profitable, there’s little need to subsidize it. It will simply grow and consume all available supply.
Large scale lithium battery storage is still truly just getting started. We need to be super smart with lining up supply for essential inputs for growth.
Then why hasn't it been keeping up? It seems that lithium recycling is way behind exploration and mining. Why? It's highly profitable as you say, are there technology limitations?
75% of all aluminum every smelted is still in use today: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_recycling#:~:text=....
We need to get lithium to that level before we make any more big, environmentally hazardous mines.