This is mostly nonsense. The majority of lithium in battery comes from West Australia. Its fairly conventional hard rock mining. There are some environmental

This is mostly nonsense. The majority of lithium in battery comes from West Australia. Its fairly conventional hard rock mining. There are some environmental concerns in the production of lithium carbonate from evaporation ponds in deserts of South America. However to say that it 'wrecks' 3rd world countries natural resources is a bit of an odd statement. The only real issue is that evaporation ponds use water from underground aquifer. This is very salty mineral rich water and the water use is not as high as farming would be and there is a lot of these aquifers. In the future, as lithium consumption growth much of the growth will come from more hard rock mining in mostly first world countries, clay mining (unlimited amounts all over the world) and direct lithium extraction (gigantic amounts of extraditable lithium in aquifers all over the world) from aquifers where the water is pumped right back, just with half as much lithium in it. Evaporation ponds are basically a legacy technology and the boom in lithium will likely mean that they are gone be phased out over the next couple decades in favor of DLE.