Of course, we're all going to live in an EV nirvana so there's no need to read this paper.
The paper is: Uncertain Future of American Lithium: A Perspective until 2050 (Alessio Miatto, Paul Wolfram, Barbara K. Reck, and Thomas E. Graedel Environmental Science & Technology 2021 55 (23), 16184-16194)
The paper has four lithium supply scenarios, the two of which sound like something I know being these:
The Adaptation Challenges scenario is developed upon SSP4, in which affluent countries invest in environmental protection programs but international cooperation is minimal, leaving each country to solve its own problems. Countries like the United States have enough expenditure capacity to support the adoption of EVs and clean energy grids, but on a global scale, the adoption of low-carbon solutions is inconsistent and insufficient to meet the climate change goals. Lithium use and associated new technologies grow in wealthy countries, but lithium recycling is not sought after because mining and associated environmental impacts occur in other countries.
2.1.4. Lithium Scenario 4: Fossil Fuel Everything
This scenario is built upon SSP5, in which nonrenewable energy sources dominate future demand. There are little to no incentives to promote the adoption of electric vehicles. Lithium use grows moderately, pushed by affluent environmentally conscious citizens rather than public policies. Lithium recycling is neglected because of the modest sales numbers of EVs and PVs with energy storage systems.
Don't worry, be happy. They'll be plenty of lithium and plenty of cobalt and nickel too, not only to build billions of Tesla cars to drive to Space X platforms for trips to the moon as well as to build that pile of batteries the size of Mount Whitney in California in order to cover those periods, of which many have occurred in recent weeks, where all the wind turbines in California spread over thousands of square miles can't produce as much energy as Diablo Canyon produces on 12 acres of land.
Enjoy the workweek.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Of course, everyone knows "there's nothing out there." 
Except a lot of irreplaceable rare creatures, vegetation, and beauty. Kiss off desert tortoises and sage grouse. On our public lands. All for what. "Green" b.s., that isn't green, and does not reduce any CO2 levels. It's heartbreaking. Most people today are from cities and populated areas and have no clue or appreciation of what we are losing. In the meantime, use those lithium batteries for everything! There's no way to recycle them. Or the windmill blades. So obliterate vast helpless landscapes and their ecosystems instead. Unfortunately, the Biden admin is on board with this and this is where I part company with them.
...as the guy who rebuilt 500 Priuses on a planet with over a billion cars:
Pyrometallurgical Technology in the Recycling of a Spent Lithium Ion Battery: Evolution and the Challenge. ( Mingxian Zhou, Bang Li, Jia Li, and Zhenming Xu, ACS ES&T Engineering 2021 1 (10), 1369-1382)
I'm sure that the same people who declared Elon Musk "green," are absolutely certain of the "green" environmental policies of wildcat "recycler" in "just one little company."
I'm sure the people praising this guy or woman in "just one little company" looked at the companies processes and they really, really, really care how the guy handles solvents, waste plastic and all the other stuff in the batteries.
Are all the world's lithium batteries being recycled as a result, or do we just have apocryphal bullshit about some wild cat somewhere doing god knows what with fairly dangerous materials? Is this received wisdom, or are there any process details?
Maybe someone should write to the authors of the paper cited in the OP and let them know their concerns expressed in their paper are invalid because some guy somewhere, just one company, has recycled 500 Priuses.
You know, I could probably recycle fuel oil in my garage. Would that be "green?"
The people who wrote the paper above in this post, the referenced paper from the primary scientific literature are referring to high temperatures.
Here's a graphic from the paper of what they call a typical lithium battery recycling furnace.
Here's a description of just one of many processes described:
Nitration roasting is also a low-temperature and highly selective roasting technology. Peng et al. (63) proposed the “nitration-roasting-leaching” process based on sulfation roasting. First, the SLIBs were nitrated to convert the metal components into the corresponding nitrates. Then the mixed nitrates were calcined at 250 °C for 1 h to obtain insoluble transition-metal oxides, whereas lithium remained as a nitrate due to its high decomposition temperature (∼600 °C). (64) Finally, the roasted products were separated by a water-leaching process. Some nitrogen oxides may be produced during this process, which can be recycled into nitric acid by a pressurized acid adsorption, oxidant, or catalyst. (65,66)
Compared to direct roasting, additive-assisted roasting technology has a high selectivity of Li. What’s more, the reaction temperature of this technology is generally lower than the atmosphere-assisted roasting process, which can reduce costs. In addition, because of the high-temperature environment, the reaction rate of the additive roasting method is higher than that of hydrometallurgy, which is a benefit to a large-scale disposal of SLIBs. However, this technology may risk toxic and harmful gas emissions (Cl2, NOx, SOx). These gas products may corrode the instrument and require a subsequent treatment to eliminate its environmental impact.
I'm sure, of course, that in lieu of charcoal, we could always put mirrors on a few hundred square miles of desert and recycle batteries for two to four hours a day in the nitrate roasting process.
That would be "green" wouldn't it?
This of course is the sick mentality of handwaving in lieu of understanding chemical engineering and energy engineering. How many solar thermal plants are their in the world as the Ivanpah solar aerial bird fryer? How many batteries are recycled using them? 500? 1000?
I really, really, really, really, really, really don't need a high school student's lesson on how batteries work. The scientific literature is littered with descriptions; Google scholar reports over 80,000 papers on the topic of recycling lithium batteries, many of them with detailed descriptions of their design and content, the latter not always known because some of the chemistry of electrolytes in particular are proprietary.
One size fits all though, right?
One really can't open any journal involved in industrial processes and their environmental impact without being presented with two or three, sometimes way more, papers on the subject of lithium batteries and recycling.
That's all wonderful, but they aren't recycled on any scale that has shut the cobalt mines in the Congo region. Or are they?
The cost of of so called "renewable energy" is inherently dependent on redundancy even if the assholes hyping say so called "renewable energy is "cheap." The cost of redundancy is both economic and environmental. It is a material waste to require two systems to do what one can do reliably. This is why Denmark and Germany have the highest electricity prices in the OECD.
There is also a moral cost to batteries, not that the people hyping them give a rat's ass.
To repeat: A battery is a device that wastes energy (2nd law of thermodynamics) and thus adds both cost and environmental impact to systems requiring them. That's why they have failed to address climate change, miserably, at a cost of trillions of dollars, and why, despite half a century of hype, a major glacier in Antarctica - which doesn't give a rat's ass about a wild cat Prius battery recycler - is nearing collapse, probably before this decade is out.
Couldn't care less?
It's late 2021. We broke 416 ppm concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere this week, as we surge toward 422 next April or May. Doesn't anyone ever get tired of this shit? I've been hearing it for almost half a century myself. I'm tired of it, even if the people chanting this happy talk aren't tired of it.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.