A10 TUESDAY, AUGUST 27, 2019 LATIMES.COM/OPINION
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he fires ragingat the edges of
the Amazon rainforest are, at
the moment, largely consuming
lands that had already been
converted from their natural
state into tracts waiting to be farmed or de-
veloped. Nevertheless, some of the blazes
are eating away at the rainforest itself, re-
ducing its size by a football field a minute.
And one of the most disturbing things about
them is that they aren’t part of the cycle of
nature, like a California wildfire might be,
but are intentionally set in many cases to
get rid of brush and felled trees to make way
for soy fields and beef grazing grounds. That
reflects Brazil’s troubling return to a policy
of deforestation that, if unabated, could
have grave consequences for efforts to
counter the worst effects of global warming.
The reason the Amazon is burning is be-
cause Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro,
who followed Donald Trump’s populist,
anti-establishment playbook to win election
last year, wants it to. He thinks the Amazon
should not be protected, and that lands re-
served for indigenous peoples should not be
recognized — all in the name of economic
growth. That see-no-evil approach is anoth-
er point Bolsonaro has in common with
Trump, who has sought to make an alarm-
ing amount of public lands available for oil
and gas drilling and other extractive indus-
tries, such as uranium mining — the health
of the planet be damned.
At the just-concluded G-7 meeting in
France, international leaders criticized Bol-
sonaro for his land-use and environmental
policies, which include telling those who
would cut the rainforest that his govern-
ment would no longer stop them. So the rate
of deforestation, while still far below what it
had been a dozen years ago, has been in-
creasing. The G-7 also announced more
than $20 million in aid to Brazil and Bolivia
for firefighting equipment — a drop in the
bucket, advocates say — and French Presi-
dent Emmanuel Macron pledged to put to-
gether an alliance to push for reforestation.
Bolsonaro was not receptive; he accused
the leaders of embracing colonialism by
telling Brazil what to do. But there’s nothing
colonial in asking a neighbor to stop lighting
fires that affect the rest of us.
The Amazon rainforest, with its vast
canopy of trees and other lush vegetation,
removes about 5% of the global carbon hu-
mans emit into the atmosphere every year.
That positive effect is offset to a degree by
the carbon released by burning brush and
trees in and around the rainforest, as well as
by the cattle that roam the range that is tak-
ing up acreage carved from the rainforest —
much of whose beef is destined for foreign
markets.
So what does the deforestation of the
Amazon have to do with us? When it comes
to carbon, we are an inextricably connected
world. The U.S. imports about 156 million
pounds of beef from Brazil each year, which
means our consumption is tied directly to
the deforestation (Brazil is the world’s larg-
est exporter of beef). Even Trump’s trade
war with China has an environmental im-
pact: China is replacing soy that it used to
buy from U.S. farmers with soy from Brazil-
ian farmers, which increases the rewards for
cutting yet more of the rainforest.
We are all joined by the hard reality that
our continued release of carbon into the at-
mosphere — whether it be from the cars we
commute in or the forest Brazilians burn to
grow food — is endangering us all. It’s a real-
ity not recognized by Bolsonaro. Nor by
Trump, who neither joined the criticism of
Bolsonaro’s policies nor showed up for the
G-7 climate talks that led to the fire aid
package. Both presidents’ disregard for the
well-being of the world is, literally, playing
with fire. That won’t end well.Bolsonaro’s rainforest fires
He didn’t set them, but Brazil’s
president invited the destruction
with his see-no-evil policies.
C
alifornia enacted the coun-
try’s most sweeping data privacy
law a little more than a year ago,
giving consumers in the state the
power to find out which busi-
nesses are collecting personal information
about them, to stop that information from
being sold and to demand that it be deleted.
It was a huge win for consumers, offering
them some control for the first time over the
revealing personal data they’re giving away
— often unknowingly — to companies online
and in their communities.
The California Consumer Privacy Act
was a compromise with online companies,
which were eager to prevent a tougher pro-
posal from going onto the ballot. Still, the
deal hasn’t stopped business lobbyists or
consumer advocates from coming back to
the Legislature this year to try to change the
measure before it takes effect Jan. 1.
Arguing that some key provisions are un-
workable, industry lobbyists have pushed to
allow more types of data to be excluded
from the law’s protections and allow more
information to be sold. Meanwhile, privacy
groups have sought to hold companies ac-
countable for every violation and to give in-
dividuals the right to sue companies that
run afoul of the law.
Their efforts haven’t yielded any major
changes to the law yet, thanks in no small
measure to Senate Judiciary Committee
Chair Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Bar-
bara) holding the line on the bills coming
through her committee. We all should hope
the Legislature keeps it that way.
The act is complex and its effects poten-
tially enormous, but it gives companies
room to fix the missteps they will inevitably
make, whether by happenstance, ignorance
or bad intent. That power to correct viola-
tions within 30 days without penalty makes
sense while businesses and consumers are
adjusting to the new law, even if it may be-
come an impediment to meaningful en-
forcement down the road. The Legislature
can always reconsider the 30-day get-out-of-
court-free pass later if the concerns about it
prove prescient and bad actors feel free to
violate users’ privacy with impunity.
At the same time, lawmakers can count
on that 30-day window to protect against
the sort of nightmare scenarios that busi-
ness lobbyists are spinning out. Among
other things, they warn that the act would
let any member of a household force online
companies to turn over the personal data
collected on other members of the house-
hold, which would be alarming in homes riv-
en by abuse; that businesses would be
forced to jump through costly and unneces-
sary hoops to protect information that can’t
reasonably be associated with any individu-
al consumer; and that the law could make it
impossible to do the sort of targeted adver-
tising that’s routine across the internet to-
day, as well as cripple popular supermarket
rewards programs.
Industry groups are right to push for
clarity and workability, but they have not
made a persuasive case that the law needs
to be amended to avert the dire outcomes
they predict. There’s another avenue to ad-
dress those issues: the state attorney gener-
al’s office, which is on the hook to provide
guidance and regulations to implement the
law.
Granted, that guidance isn’t expected to
arrive until mid-2020, months after the new
law goes into effect. But that delay is a fea-
ture, not a bug; only the attorney general
has the power to enforce the California Con-
sumer Privacy Act’s provisions on data col-
lection and sale, and that enforcement isn’t
likely to start until after the rules come out.
Besides, supporters say the law isn’t in-
tended to produce (and may already protect
against) many of the noxious results that its
critics are sounding alarms about. The best
way to tell where the real problems are —
and there will be problems — is to put the
measure into effect and see how businesses
and consumers respond.
Ideally, California wouldn’t have to write
basic data privacy protections into state
codes. Just as Europe enacted continent-
wide rules in 2016 for the collection of per-
sonal information, so should Congress have
responded long ago to the endless privacy
outrages inflicted by social media compa-
nies, data brokers, banks and the like. But
Congress showed no real interest in a pri-
vacy bill of rights until California adopted its
own, and even then it seemed to be respond-
ing mainly to tech companies that wanted to
preempt the state law with weaker national
standards.
So it’s imperative that California’s pri-
vacy initiative stay on track, and that con-
sumers seize the chance they will be given in
January to find out who is collecting, storing
and selling what kinds of personal informa-
tion about them. Like it or not, the secret
currency of commerce is personal data.
That’s largely because of the public’s unwit-
ting acquiescence in a system that seemed
to deliver valuable services for free. The new
California law will let us all find out the price
we’ve been paying in terms of our personal
information so we can decide whether to
keep playing along.Data privacy in the crosshairs
Lawmakers should resist calls to
make major changes in new state
protections before they take effect.
A survivor’s
invitation
Re “Witnessing hate,”
letters, Aug. 25I would like to issue a
personal invitation to the
group of high school stu-
dents I read about in the
Los Angeles Times. They
were caught on video at a
gathering giving the “heil
Hitler” salute while singing
a Nazi marching song. The
kids in the video were
smiling and having a great
time.
But for me, those
sounds and images bring
back painful memories of
death and destruction. I’m
a Holocaust survivor.
I was a few years young-
er than the students when
my life was turned upside
down, when I was robbed of
everything dear to me, just
because I was born a Jew.
I’m inviting these stu-
dents to come to the Muse-
um of Tolerance, to come
and listen to survivors tell
their stories. Only then will
they begin to understand
how much pain they have
caused those of us who
lived through those dark
times. Only then will they
begin to understand that
hate speech can never be
tolerated — not even in
jest.
I hope they take me up
on my invitation and bring
their parents too.
Ella Mandel
West Los AngelesTrump’s most
troubling week
Re “Trump sends mixed
signals on trade war,” Aug.
26History may record
these last two weeks as
when it became inescap-
ably evident that the per-
son occupying the position
of president of the United
States was unwell.
His attacks on Ameri-
can Jewish voters, his
lose-lose meddling in Isra-
eli politics, and his launch-
ing of an economic war
with China over trade all
demonstrate that this man
lives in a world defined only
by his reality rather than
by its impact on others.
Meanwhile, there are
growing indications that
the real world is pacing
itself for his removal from
office. This will only aggra-
vate President Trump’s
extremes of behavior. The
probable outcome is wel-
come, yet the journey is
likely to get rougher as
Trump descends into
terminal narcissism, oblivi-
ous to collateral damage.
Glenn Pascall
Dana Point::A 30% tariff (a tax, in
other words) on $250 bil-
lion of Chinese imports
plus another 15% on $billion comes to $120 billion
a year. That means that in
less than nine years,
American consumers will
make up for the $1-trillion
tax giveaway to the wealth-
iest individuals and corpo-
rations.
Think about this while
you wonder how to put
shoes on your kids’ grow-
ing feet and watch your
retirement account (if you
have one) melt away.
Marcia Goldstein
Laguna Woods::It appears that our
president enjoys conflict
and the challenge of mak-
ing his presence known on
all of the world’s stages.
At the conclusion of the
G-7 summit in France on
Aug. 26, and the president
again taking center stage,
he said that his Florida golf
resort would be a perfect
location for next year’s
meeting. I don’t suppose he
considers that to be a
serious conflict of interest.
Then again, conflict and
self-interest are the
mantras he lives by.
Denise Gee
San Clemente‘Formerly
incarcerated’
Re “ ‘Convicts’ and ‘felons’
no more,” Aug. 23Leave it to those mad-
cap politicians in San
Francisco to bring to life
the words of the great Ben
Jonson: “Language most
shows a man: speak, that I
may see thee.”
Boy, can we see them, in
all their cockeyed, politi-
cally correct glory, trying so
earnestly to play with
language, to assure that
the lowest common de-
nominator drops like a
rock.
Or perhaps the San
Francisco supervisors’
proposal to stop using
words like “felon” and
“convict” in favor of “for-
merly incarcerated person”
is just a joke. Are San Fran-
cisco’s leaders pulling wool
over the eyes of us South-
ern California rubes?
No, that’s too much to
hope for. When our cities
have real problems to
worry about, this sort of
dithering is inexcusable.
Please, San Francisco,
tell Los Angeles how you’ve
dealt with homelessness
and hunger in your city, so
that we can do it too and
have time left over for
linguistic lunacy.
Carol Gwenn
West Hollywood::Perhaps, rather than
referring to convicts and
felons as formerly incarcer-
ated persons, you could
include them along with
parolees and juvenile delin-
quents under one label:
“fine upstanding citizens.”Unfortunately, however,
whichever politically cor-
rect term is chosen, even-
tually everyone would
figure out that you were
referring to a bunch of
criminals.
Scott McKenzie
La Cañada Flintridge::I agree with the propos-
al’s statement that “lan-
guage shapes the ideas,
perceptions, beliefs, atti-
tudes and actions of indi-
viduals, societies and
governments.” This is why
we appropriately label
offenders with identifying
descriptive words such as
“felon,” “rapist” or “par-
olee.”
Law-abiding citizens
want to know what kind of
people we’re dealing with.
We want to be able to per-
ceive the truth.
San Francisco’s propos-
al is nothing but a blinder
to attempt to hide the facts
in this state’s continuing
moral breakdown.
Dianne Marlin
Long BeachWorking for
Ray Bradbury
Re “The lived-in history of
Los Angeles,” Opinion,
Aug. 23David L. Ulin writes of
Ray Bradbury’s now-de-
molished house in Cheviot
Hills, “Bradbury’s house ...
was notable for what went
on inside it.” No kidding.
My wife and I, strug-
gling screenwriters in the
1980s, typed for the author.
He was writing “Death Is a
Lonely Business” at the
time and our routine was to
pick up 20 or so handwrit-
ten pages from him every
day, seven days a week.
He told us he was hav-
ing a party one night, but
we should just let ourselves
in the unlocked Cheviot
Hills front door the next
morning and go down-
stairs to his office to re-
trieve the pages.
En route through the
post-party house, you
might have thought a pack
of wild teenagers had
hosted. There were over-
flowing ashtrays and
empty wine and cham-
pagne bottles on their
sides everywhere you
looked.
But downstairs, as
promised, were Ray’s 20
pages. But of course.
Michael Pardridge
and Janice Hickey
St. Augustine, Fla.::Reading Ulin’s piece on
Los Angeles’ amnesiac
literary landscape, and
teacher Jeremy Adams’
piece on young people who
no longer read passion-
ately or seriously, I recalled
being one of many teen-
agers who haunted the
Free Press bookstore on
Fairfax Avenue, Pickwick
on Hollywood Boulevard,
Dutton’s in North Holly-
wood, Chatterton’s in Los
Feliz and other great and
vanished bookshops.
When the L.A. Times
stops printing a book event
calendar, when boutiques
disappear one Fairfax shop
after another, and when
the L.A. culturati revere
the “Brady Bunch” house
more than the Ray Brad-
bury house, young people
get the message about
what matters and what
doesn’t.
Jo Perry
Studio CityDMV defense
Re “Can he give us the
DMV we’ve been waiting
for?” Aug. 25I continue to read about
the Department of Motor
Vehicles being a troubled
agency.
Recently, I renewed my
driver’s license at the DMV
in Laguna Hills. With an
appointment, I was in and
out in less than an hour.
I don’t know how much
better the DMV can be.
Martin A. Brower
Corona del MarScience and sickness
Re “Anti-vaxxers’ violent rhetoric,” editorial, Aug. 23, and
“Teen girl was sick with measles at Disneyland,” Aug. 24The online anti-vaccine crowd to which the alleged
attacker of pediatrician and state Sen. Richard Pan
(D-Sacramento) belongs includes a few honestly
concerned parents, but also many conspiracy theorists,
science denialists and, yes, trolls and bots. (I know
because I’ve been helping protect scientists on Twitter by
operating a shared blocklist called Science Shield, so I
spend far too much time looking at anti-vaxxer tweets.)
These people can be scary, but we must not let them
distract us from protecting our children. More recently,
we learned of another measles exposure at Disneyland
and LAX, a reminder that disease is only a plane ride or a
trip to the farmer’s market away.
Pan’s SB 276, which would close a loophole used by
parents who have no valid medical reason not to
inoculate their children, is a fair approach to reducing
exemption abuse and getting school vaccination rates
back up. The Legislature should get it on the governor’s
desk pronto. Lives depend on it.
Dan Kegel
Los AngelesJay L. ClendeninLos Angeles Times
DISNEYLANDwas among the California tourist
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