this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2025
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[–] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 20 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (4 children)

I know there's been lots of headlines in the past like OMG there's not enough lithium! It's never been true.

It's one of the most abundant elements out there, it's everywhere. It was always more about what reserves we knew about, but when what we knew about wasn't going to be enough, people go looking, and it's abundant.

Also the more uses there are for it, the more profitable it is to extract from these methods and the better we get at it, the cheaper it is to extract, which further opens up even more options.

[–] k0e3@lemmy.ca 8 points 6 hours ago

I don't actually remember any articles that claimed there were lithium shortages in that there isn't enough on the planet, but rather that China is the only country with a working supply chain.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

It’s one of the most abundant elements out there

I mean, it's not. Either in the crust or the universe - stellar nucleosynthesis skips straight to carbon.

Your point still stands, though, since abundance is only one of the factors that goes into how easy something is to recover.

[–] Amuletta@lemmy.ca 2 points 44 minutes ago

I suppose it's a bit like diamonds, which are actually really abundant, just not always very accessible.

[–] skibidi@lemmy.world -1 points 53 minutes ago

Lithium is quite rare. Essentially all the lithium that exists was created at the big bang, and since then the total supply has been diminishing with each generation of stars - they fuse lithium into heavier elements.

There's less lithium all the time