As noted in the MIT article:
> Since most natural ecosystems absorb and store carbon, while farmland in active use tends to produce it, this land use change can create more climate-warming pollution
Basically the land is changed from a carbon store to a carbon producer for biomass meaning you're no longer sequestering the carbon which is where you get extra carbon in the ecosystem even if you're not having any carbon in the transportation & production.
Much of the world was covered in forests for literally millions of years. Dig down a deep as roots go, count up the carbon in a given acre, and divide by a few million and you get essentially 0/year as the long term rate.
Transitions between forests and farmland basically store or release a fixed quantity per acre though it’s a slow process for deep root systems.
As to lithium being consumed, it’s still around we don’t actually need to recycle it to be available to humanity in the future. We’re talking hundreds to thousands of years from now before mining becomes an issue, current economic issues are largely meaningless. Unlike oil, these are the early days of the lithium economy. Making a big battery pile somewhere is perfectly reasonable form of recycling.