The unstoppable rise of batteries is leading to a domino effect that puts half of global fossil fuel demand at risk

The article is by Rocky Mountain Institute, which is a think tank focused on clean energy transitions. And the rest of the language in the article is much more positive - batteries will enable a shift away from fossil fuels.

So yes, very odd word choice in the title given that the rest of the article generally views fossil fuel displacement to be a good thing.

Batteries take “rare earth metals” like cobalt.

Some Lithium-Ion batteries use Cobalt, but many don't. Lithium-Iron-Phosphate, for example, is a popular variant without any Cobalt. There is a push going on to move to battery chemistries without Cobalt or to reduce the actual amount of Cobalt where it is still required.

Current Li-ion batteries have numerous issues, but fortunately there are several alternatives too. Bringing a new battery chemistry to production scale hasn’t been easy, but we’re taking small steps like that every year.

We may still need lithium, nickel or manganese in the near future, but the demand for cobalt (per cell) has been decreasing gradually. Who knows which alternative ends up dominating the market after a few decades

And petroleum products don't? I don't get your argument Lithium mining is pretty bad but nowhere near as bad as oil/fossil fuels

Fracking contaminates ground water, when you pump oil out it get replaced with what? Water, once again contaminating everything it touches. Plus this doesn't happen with Lithium mining either

Funny how people are overly concerned about cobalt in EV batteries but never cellphone batteries.

Nah, people hate nuance, it's now the age of false dichotomy. Where you either offer my position unconditional non-critical support, or you are offering my opponents unconditional non-critical support.

I said something similar about nuclear power a while ago and got a similar response.