First it was peak oil—back in the 1970s, no less. Then it was peak oil again and again. Now we have moved up a rung and are worrying about peak lithium as a myriad of electric vehicle production and sales forecasts prepare us for a spike in lithium demand. This worry, however, is just as pointless as the worry about peak oil. First, it’s not new: back in 2015 people were worrying that the lithium available on Earth will not be enough to support a booming EV industry sporting 100 megafactories around the world by 2040. While acknowledged as wild speculation , this scenario was posited as a possible one. Of course, anything is possible, but what fans of peak whatever theories seem to ignore is the fact that both extraction and production technologies evolve. This is why reserves of metals and fossil fuels tend to increase over time: […]