Reading the Times

(And Not Just the Paper)

Let me try to tell you what an old man I really am. As a start, imagine this: I still read the New York Times every day on paper. Yes, the paper New York Times still exists! Yikes! And the other day, at the very bottom of page seven of the first section of the Times, I noticed an article by Rebecca Dzombak with this headline: “2025 Wildfires Were World’s Costliest Ever, Study Says, With Populated Areas Hit.”

Really? The costliest fires ever? Doesn’t that catch your attention? It certainly did mine!

In fact, wouldn’t it catch your attention more than “President Said to Be Dropping Plans for Fund,” or “In Stalemates, Trump’s Talk Meets Reality,” or, for that matter, “Lutnick Runs Commerce Dept. With Bare-Knuckles Approach”? All three of those headlines were on the front page of that same paper, not at the bottom of page seven, and all three were, of course, distinctly Trumpian-themed pieces.

And, of course -- sorry to be so repetitive, but what choice do I have in the world of... yes, who else but, of course, Donald J. Trump? -- who or what could possibly catch your attention more than him and his crew?

If he were another president, I would have written “his crew and him,” but of course, in his world -- and all too sadly in ours as well -- he always seems to come first, no matter what. Certainly, on the planet that Donald Trump rules (or at least thinks he rules), the last thing that should appear on a front page would be an article about the scorching of this world of ours, or “the costliest wildfires ever,” or the fact that the European Union “declared the 2025 wildfire season the most destructive on record,” or that we (or at least our children and grandchildren) could potentially be facing the end of this planet as we’ve known it all these thousands and thousands of years, right?

Or put another way, of these four lines, which would you have highlighted on page one and which would you have buried on page seven:

“President Trump is backing off his plan to establish a $1.8 billion fund to compensate people who claimed they were victims of unfair prosecution by the government, two people familiar with the matter said on Monday.”

“President Trump likes his military and diplomatic victories quick, clean, and decisive”

“When auto executives learned last year that President Trump’s punishing tariffs on foreign car parts were set to cost their companies billions of dollars, they were rattled.”

Or (yawn):

“Even though the total area burned was relatively small, 2025 was the most economically damaging wildfire year on record, according to a new analysis published Sunday.”

Yes, those are the first lines of each of those pieces and that ordering tells you so much about how Donald Trump has indeed taken control of our world in 2026. And give The Donald credit. After all, his greatest skill (above all others) is his unbelievable ability -- no matter what he has to say -- to regularly get more attention than just about anything (or anyone else) on this planet of ours, including the possible end of this world as we’ve known it.

And I suppose we need to give him credit in another sense, too. He has, in every imaginable fashion, proved capable of all too literally changing the climate of our all-American world. (And I’m already sweating as I write that!) He’s the man who has shut down wind-power projects along the East Coast, tossed solar power projects out the window, managed to open another 1.3 billion acres of ocean waters to oil and natural gas drilling, and considers climate change not just a distinctly fake news story, but a genuine “scam,” and yet Americans elected him president a second time in 2024.

And consider this no less strange: Despite Donald Trump, as the Guardian reported recently, red states, unbelievably enough, seem to be heading the green energy build-out in this country, with Texas, for instance, “the leading green energy superpower, especially in wind power where it leads the country,” while green states seem -- how truly strange! -- to be cutting back on or “shrinking away from their climate plans.” Yikes!

And in his own strange fashion (despite that “despite Donald Trump” in the previous paragraph), “our” president has, in fact, launched a kind of global green energy -- well, if not revolution, then at least potential spurt. After all, by launching a war on Iran and ensuring the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz, through which about one-fifth of this planet’s sea-borne oil and 20% of its natural gas passes (or rather once passed), he’s also spurred countries globally, especially in Asia and Europe, to at least start thinking about revving up green energy production. Of course, It’s sad indeed to count on a war for good news on the energy front, but there we are. Sigh.

Now, don’t misunderstand me. Donald Trump is doing everything he can to promote the worst kind of energy on this planet. Only recently, for instance, he’s been using the Cold-War era Defense Production Act to provide grants to, as the (wonderful) Guardian again reports, “more than a dozen existing coal plants across the U.S., including facilities capable of exporting coal.” As he put it recently, “As a result of the $700m investment that I’m announcing today, we will protect 14 coal plants and 42 coalmines, a tremendous number, and build two new coal plants and one massive new export terminal.” And he added charmingly, “You’re not allowed to say ‘coal’ within the Trump administration unless it’s preceded by the words ‘clean, beautiful’.”

Now, admittedly, American coal production has nonetheless been falling for years.

And of course, if I were running a newspaper these days, I would indeed put the fate of the planet in the age of Donald Trump front and center. The top of page one, day in, day out. After all, nothing else truly matters if this planet of ours becomes ever more unlivable for us.

Let’s face it, if we don’t read not The Times but our times correctly, we’re in trouble deep.