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Martin Scorsese turned oil extraction into an even darker Goodfellas.
The mafia honorific “don,” meaning “boss” — as in Don Corleone or the Quiet Don Russell Bufalino — derives from an older Italian usage of the word as a title for male nobility, like a prince or a duke. You might, in a stretch, even manage to get away with translating it as “king.”
Martin Scorsese’s newest film, Killers of the Flower Moon, doesn’t have a don, or even, as far as I could tell, any Italians, which might prevent its ready categorization as a gangster film in the vein of the director’s most memorable work, like Goodfellas, Mean Streets, or The Irishman. I’ve already seen Killers of the Flower Moon called a Western (I suppose because there are moonshiners, outlaws, and a boom town that was actually, incredibly, named Whizbang) as well as a work of “true crime” (because it is based on David Grann’s nonfiction book of the same name, about the Osage murders).
But just because no one ever refers to the story’s central antagonist, William Hale, as “don” doesn’t mean he isn’t one: He’s the head of a crime family, politically influential even beyond Osage Country, and heck, he’s even played by Robert De Niro. Not to mention everyone deferentially calls him “King.” In this way, with Killers of the Flower Moon, Scorsese has added another outstanding gangster film to his portfolio, only instead of wise guys running cocaine or skimming cash from a casino, the central crime stems from oil.
In 1871, the U.S. government forced the Osage tribe from a reservation in Kansas to what was believed to be an undesirable swath of northern Oklahoma. Unlike many other tribes at the time, the Osage legally bought and owned their land, including its mineral rights, which meant that the 2,229 original surviving members would share any natural wealth that was discovered on their territory in the form of an individually allotted “headright.”
And what was discovered was oil.
The Osage started selling oil leases for their land to white prospectors, with the petroleum wealth flowing back to the headright holders, making them some of the richest people in the world per capita at the time. But quickly, opportunistic outsiders descended, looking for ways to make their own buck. The creation of a demeaning and racist guardianship system became one easy way to siphon off money to well-positioned whites, who supposedly “managed” the funds for “incompetent” full-blooded Native Americans (in truth, the whites paid themselves handsomely while giving the actual headright holders a pathetically small “allowance”). But it was even more lucrative if you could get a headright of your own by marrying into an Osage family and inheriting one.
Directors have used oil as a catalyst for capitalist commentary and crime dramas before — There Will Be Blood (2007), based on Upton Sinclair’s Oil!, is of course particularly memorable, and How to Blow Up a Pipeline was a terrific new entry from earlier this year. But what sets Scorsese’s immediately apart is that it is based on a true story, a fact he reminds us of with the insertion of occasional black-and-white camerawork and archival photography. However, with some genre sleight of hand, it never veers into becoming true crime.
A straighter adaptation of David Grann’s book might have preserved its twists and slow reveals — hallmarks of the true crime genre, which invites armchair detectives to gather the clues and put the pieces together alongside the investigators. Scorsese’s script (co-written with Eric Roth) is much more linear and cuts all but the core storyline. King immediately comes across as sinister and Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) is revealed early to be in on his uncle’s plot. Instead of carefully doled-out clues, the adaptation’s propulsion comes from playing up the familiar standbys of the gangster genre: the gruesome killing of accomplices and witnesses; some comically dumb criminals; a sprinkle of insurance fraud; the strain of crime on domestic life (admittedly an understatement in the case of Ernest and Molly); and the eventual arrival of the feds and the final downfall of the racket.
It’s an arc Scorsese has used plenty of times before — Goodfellas and Casino immediately spring to mind — with one important exception. The director’s gangster films that follow the rise and fall of a criminal tend to include a lengthy period of spectacle and hedonism, when the aspirational lifestyle of the gangster is finally achieved. Doors are held open for them; strangers come by to pay their respects; money is spent freely and lavishly. But besides some modest home improvements, Ernest and to a smaller extent, King, never seem to actually be enjoying any of the oil fortune. Instead, the killing and scheming are all done for some future gain of money that is never actually realized.
Telling the story of the Osage murders as a gangster film has implications beyond just interesting genre play, though. While traditional gangster films might feel “fun” when the operation is a success (to the point that Scorsese is frequently and unfairly criticized as “glorifying” the mobsters he portrays), Killers of the Flower Moon is extraordinarily careful and respectful of the real history it is portraying. And it’s that history — which reverberates today — that makes the film so haunting. We should fully appreciate that Martin Scorsese, who isfrequently cited as one of the greatest working filmmakers today, made a movie about the evils beget by oil extraction starring two of America’s biggest movie stars, DiCaprio and De Niro. And while Killers of the Flower Moon is not about “climate,” per se, it certainly qualifies as part of a growing trend of climate-adjacent films like Dune (2021), Parasite (2019), and Black Panther (2018) that are not only mainstream but also getting Oscar nods. Killers of the Flower Moon is already being discussed by prognosticators as a favorite for Best Picture — and could be the first-ever overtly climate-related movie to win.
That’s huge not because Scorsese is bringing climate to the masses, but because these are stories and histories that can no longer be ignored by Hollywood. The fact that Killers of the Flower Moon can actually pull off being an entertaining gangster story shows how much progress we’re making from scold-y climate projects of the past, which never seemed to have much creative ambition beyond flagging that sea levels are rising. That the King of the Osage Hills is a cinematic mobster worthy of mention besides Coppola’s Don Corleone or Goodfella’s Jimmy Conway just becomes the icing on the cake.
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On budget negotiations, Climeworks, and DOE grants
Current conditions: It’s peak storm season in the U.S., with severe weather in the forecast for at least the next six days in the Midwest and East• San Antonio, Texas, is expected to hit 108 degrees Fahrenheit today• Monsoon rains have begun in Sri Lanka.
The House Budget Committee meeting to prepare the reconciliation bill for a floor vote as early as next week appears to be a go for Friday, despite calls from some Republicans to delay the session. At least three GOP House members, including two members of the Freedom Caucus, have threatened to vote no on the budget because a final score for the Energy and Commerce portion of the bill, which includes cuts to Medicaid, won’t be ready from the Congressional Budget Office until next week. That is causing a “math problem” for Republicans, Politico writes, because the Budget Committee “is split 21-16 in favor of Republicans, and Democrats are expecting full attendance,” meaning Republicans can “only lose two votes if they want to move forward with the megabill Friday.” Republican Brandon Gill of Texas is currently out on paternity leave, further reducing the margin for disagreement.
House Speaker Mike Johnson is also contending with discontent in the ranks over cuts to clean energy tax credits. “It’s not as bad as I thought it was going to be, but it’s still pretty bad,” New York Republican Andrew Garbarino, a co-chair of the House Bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus, told Politico on Thursday. But concerns about the cuts, which would heavily impact Republican state economies and jobs, do not appear to be a “red line” for many others, including Georgia’s Buddy Carter, whose district benefits from Inflation Reduction Act credits for a Hyundai car and battery plant that is among the targets for elimination. You can learn more about the cuts Republicans are proposing to the IRA in our coverage here.
The Swiss carbon removal company Climeworks is preparing for significant cuts to its workforce, citing the larger economic landscape and the Trump administration’s lack of consistent support. The company currently has 498 employees, but is undergoing a consultation process, indicating it is looking to cut more than 10% of its workforce at once, SwissInfo.ch reports. “Our financial resources are limited,” Climeworks’ co-founder and managing director Jan Wurzbacher said in comments on Swiss TV.
Though Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is a known proponent of carbon capture, and there had been excitement in the industry that Trump’s attempts to expedite federal permitting would benefit carbon storage sites, the administration has also hollowed out the Department of Energy’s carbon removal team, my colleague Katie Brigham has reported. The ongoing funding cuts and uncertainty have made it difficult to get information from the government that could affect Climework’s Project Cypress in Louisiana, although Wurzbacher stressed that “we are not currently aware that our project would be stopped.”
Energy Secretary Chris Wright announced in a Thursday memo that the department will be reviewing at least $15 billion worth of grants awarded to “power grid and manufacturing supply chain projects” under the Biden administration, Reuters reports. “With this process, the Department will ensure we are doing our due diligence, utilizing taxpayer dollars to generate the largest possible benefit to the American people and safeguarding our national security,” Wright said in his statement.
The memo goes on to note that the DOE plans to prioritize “large-scale commercial projects that require more detailed information from the awardees for the initial phase of this review, but this process may extend to other DOE program offices as the reviews progress.” Projects that don’t meet the DOE’s standards could be denied, as could projects of grantees who fail to “respond to information requests within the provided time frame, does not respond to follow-up questions in a timely manner.” As of last week, Wright told lawmakers, “we’ve canceled zero” existing projects so far, E&E News writes; the agency will reportedly be reviewing at least 179 different awards during its audit.
The number of National Weather Service offices ending 24-hour operations and severe weather alerts is increasing. On Thursday, The San Francisco Chronicle confirmed that California’s Sacramento and Hanford offices, which provide information to more than 7 million people in the Central Valley, have been forced to reduce service due to “critically reduced staffing.”
Eliminating 24-hour service is especially concerning for the Central Valley and surrounding foothills, where around-the-clock weather updates can be critical. “These are offices that have both dealt with major wildfire episodes most of the past 10 years, and we are now entering fire season,” Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA and UC Agriculture and Natural Resources, told the Chronicle. “That’s a big, big problem.” Swain additionally shared on LinkedIn a map he’d put together of regions in the U.S. that no longer have full-service weather coverage, including “a substantial chunk of Tornado Alley during peak tornado season and the entirety of Alaska’s vast North Slope region.” The NWS is additionally seeking to fill 155 vacancies in coastal states that could face risks as the Atlantic hurricane season begins at the end of the month, The Washington Post reports. An estimated 500 of 4,200 NWS employees have been fired or taken early retirements since the start of Trump’s term.
Heatmap’s “most fascinating” EV of 2025 just got pushed back to 2026. The Ram 1500 Ramcharger — which has a 140-mile electric range as well as a V6 engine attached to a generator to power the car when the battery runs out — is now set to launch in the first quarter of next year due to “extending the quality validation period,” Crain’s Detroit Business reported this week. Parent company Stellantis also pushed back the launch of its fully electric Ram 1500 REV until summer 2027, with a planned model year of 2028. “Our plan ensures we are offering customers a range of trucks with flexible powertrain options that best meet their needs,” Stellantis spokeswoman Jodi Tinson told Crain’s in an email. Though you now have even longer to wait, you can read more about the car Jesse Jenkins calls “brilliant” here.
GMC
The 2026 GMC Hummer EV just got even more ridiculous. “Thanks to the new Carbon Fiber Edition,” the 9,000-pound car “can zoom to 60 miles per hour in 2.8 seconds,” InsideEVs reports.
A conversation with Jillian Blanchard of Lawyers for Good Government about the heightened cost of permitting delays
This week I chatted with Jillian Blanchard, vice president of climate change and environmental justice with Lawyers for Good Government, an organization that has been supporting beneficiaries of the Inflation Reduction Act navigate the uncertainties surrounding tax credits and grant programs under the Trump administration. The reason I wanted to chat with Jillian is simple: the IRA is under threat for the first time under a Republican Congress. I wanted to understand how solar and wind projects could be impacted by the House Republican reconciliation bill and putting IRA tax credits in doubt. I learned a lot.
The following conversation was lightly edited for clarity.
Okay, Jillian, what’s the topline here? How would the GOP reconciliation bill impact individual projects’ development?
There are big chunks of the reconciliation bill that will have dramatic impacts on project development, including language that would repeal or phase out bipartisan and popular tax credits in a way that would make it very, very difficult to invest in projects. I can get into the weeds next.
But it’s worth saying first – the group of programs aside from tax credits that [House Republicans] would repeal represents every single part of America. Hundreds of projects that will not go forward if these programs are not going well. And they have several legally obligated grants that EPA has already mucked up in a litany of ways. But what they’re proposing to do is to pull the rug out from under those programs. On top of that they want to pull any unobligated funding out.
I think it’s extremely misrepresentative to say these are not big cuts. They’re significant cuts to clean air and clean water across the board.
Help me get into the weeds about how phasing out the credits will make it harder to invest in a project.
Right now, a bank might want to invest a certain amount of money in a clean energy project because they know on the back end they can get 30% or 40% back on their investment. A return through tax credits. They can bank on that, because tax credits are a guarantee.
Was that an intentional pun? “Bank”?
Yeah, it is. I love a good pun. You opened the floodgates, that was a mistake.
But anyway, the program itself was supposed to be around until at least 2032 and the bank could bank on those tax credits. That’s a big runway, because projects could get delayed and you could lock in the credit as soon as you started construction.
Now they’re doing a phase-out approach where if your project is not placed into service before a certain date, you don’t avoid the phase out. You don’t get any protections if you’re starting your project now or next year. It has to be placed in service before 2028 or else your project may not be eligible. You are constructing it, you are financing it, but then through no fault of your own – a storm or whatever – then suddenly that project is no longer entitled to get 30% or 40% back.
That’s a big risk. And banks don’t like risk.
Opposition on the ground also delays projects the way a storm does. Would this empower those opponents?
Oh, totally. Totally. If anyone wants to fight a project, a bank might be even less likely to invest in it. The NIMBYs for that particular project become a risk.
What would you tell a developer at this moment who is wondering about the uncertainty around the IRA?
I would tell them that now is the time to speak up. If they want to stay in this business and make sure their energy stays as low-cost as it already is, they need to speak up right now, no matter what their political party affiliation is. Make it clear solar isn’t going away, wind isn’t going away, storage isn’t going away. These are markets America needs to be competitive with the rest of the world.
Investors are only just now starting to digest what the proposed cuts will mean, especially for energy storage.
Is Wall Street too sanguine about the House of Representatives’ proposal to gut the Inflation Reduction Act? When the House Ways and Means Committee unveiled its language on the law on Monday — phasing out tax credits, implementing strict restrictions on business relationships with Chinese companies, and altering when projects are eligible for credits — some investors responded to the cutbacks by driving up the prices of some clean energy stocks.
The residential solar company Sunrun traded up on Tuesday by 8.6%, and the American solar manufacturer First Solar was up over 22%. (Stock movements on Monday were largely in response to the pause of the U.S.-China trade war, also announced that morning.)
“The early drafts of a Republican tax and spending bill weren’t as bad for renewables as feared,” wrote Barron’s. Morgan Stanley analysts used the same language — “not as bad as feared” — in a note to clients on the text. “Industry was bracing for way worse,” Don Schneider, the deputy head of public policy for Piper Sandler and a former Republican staffer on the Ways and Means Committee, wrote on X.
While many analysts — and, to be honest, journalists at Heatmap — have issued dire warnings about how the various provisions of the Ways and Means language could together make much of the IRA essentially impossible to use, even before the tax credits phase out, investors on Wall Street and in Washington seem to have shrugged them off. Some level of cutting was all but inevitable, and “not as bad as it could have been” is reason enough to celebrate — plus there’s also “it’ll probably change, anyway.”
There’s something to this. A group ofmoderate Republicans criticized the language on Wednesday as too restrictive, specifically citing changes to three overarching features of the tax credits: when projects would be eligible for tax credits, where companies are able to source components and materials, and whether companies are allowed to freely buy and sell tax credits generated by their projects. (Wouldn’t you know it, these complaints largely echo what Heatmap has written in the past few days.)
In the Senate, meanwhile, Republican Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, said that the text as written would be too damaging to advanced nuclear and enhanced geothermal generation. The phase-out timelines in the Ways and Means language are “too short for truly new technologies,” Cramer told Politico.
Pavan Venkatakrishnan, an infrastructure fellow at the Institute for Progress, told me that he expects the bill to evolve in a way to meet the concerns of Senate Republicans like Cramer.
“Given considerations both political and procedural, like the more flexible reconciliation instructions Senate Finance is afforded relative to House Ways and Means and the disproportionate impact current text entails for technologies Republicans traditionally favor, like nuclear, geothermal, and hydropower, I think it’s fair to say that this text will change over the coming weeks,” he said.
Finally, days after the Ways and Means committee made its thinking public, Wall Street seems to be catching on to the implications. The new foreign entities of concern rules pose a particularly huge danger to the renewable energy sector, according to Jefferies analyst Julien Dumoulin-Smith, and especially to energy storage, which would be the key provider of reliability on a renewable-heavy grid. Energy storage looks to account for almost 30% of new generator additions this year, according to the Energy Information Administration.
“We think the market got it wrong for storage,” Dumoulin-Smith wrote in a note to clients. The market has yet to “digest and fully interpret the implications of proposed tariff and tax policy, which as currently written do not bode well for storage,” he said. The foreign sourcing language “is more restrictive than initially thought, with some industry stakeholders calling the proposal a near repeal on IRA.”
The storage supply chain is intensely entangled with China. Many companies, including Tesla,have been forced to disclose to investors just how reliant they are on China for their storage businesses.
China alone accounted for 70% of battery imports in 2024, according to industry analysts at BloombergNEF, over $14 billion worth. About a quarter of the metals used in battery manufacturing — especially graphite — came from China, BNEF figures show. For specific battery chemistry like lithium iron phosphate, which is popular for stationary storage products, the supply chain is essentially 100% Chinese.
Wall Street revenue and profit estimates “do not adequately capture the extent of risks” facing the U.S. storage industry, Dumoulin-Smith wrote. The storage company Fluence’s stock fell around 1.5% today, and is down over 5.5% since close of trading on Monday, as the market began to digest the House language.
It is possible that the foreign sourcing rules will be loosened and phase-outs for tax credits and transferability lengthened, Venkatakrishnan told me, but not in a way that would endanger the overall structure of the bill. Cuts to the Inflation Reduction Act are a key source of revenue for the Republican bill-writers to ensure as many of the tax cuts they want can fit within the budgetary scope they’ve given themselves.
“Any adjustments will be made with an eye toward ensuring budgetary offsets are sufficient to enable success of the broader enterprise,” Venkatakrishnan said. In other words, as much as some lawmakers may want to see these tax credits preserved, ultimately, they’ve got to pass a bill to ensure Trump’s tax cuts stick around.