In 2020, the consequences of climate change are accelerating around the world.  Unusually catastrophic wildfires have destroyed at least five entire towns in Oregon and several others in the western US.  As of October 8 in the U.S., in 2020 alone, 45,196 wildfires have burned almost 8 millions acres, which is 1.4 millions acres more than what usually burns in 10 years.  And we are still early in the fire season for California.

The enormous derecho that struck the Midwest in August destroyed more than a million acres of crops and left Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in tatters.  In September and early October, while hurricanes caused widespread flooding in the southern U.S., catastrophic floods have displaced hundreds of thousands in several African, Southeast Asian and European nations.  As a consequence of global warning, between 1992 and 2019, Greenland lost 3.8 trillion tons of ice.  Based on this news, scientists have doubled their worse-case prediction of sea rise by the year 2100, to a level that would see the Nile delta, large parts of Bangladesh, and portions of cities including London, New York, and Shanghai vanish underwater.

In a 2019 study published in Science, an international team of scientists urged the world community to drastically accelerate efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  “…the impacts of climate change are happening faster and more extensively than projected even just a few years ago,” one of the scientists warned.

Ultimately, preventing additional climate change will cost less than coping with the irreversible consequences of our current course of destruction.  We have a choice to sustain or destroy life on earth. There is no time left to support leaders and industries that have chosen destruction.

Worse, the one-third of the country with a pre-existing condition may find themselves out of luck. Those can include asthma, high blood pressure, or pregnancy! And Republicans’ promises to ‘protect pre-existing conditions’ may be more the idea than the financial reality. Obamacare required that insurance companies not raise rates on Americans with pre-existing conditions; Republicans make no such promise.

As many as 133 million Americans – more than one-third of the country – under the age of 65 with pre-existing conditions – high blood pressure or asthma, for example – could lose their health insurance or pay exorbitantly high premiums to continue it, according to a 2017 HHS report. A 2019 Kaiser Family Foundation study concluded that 54 million Americans have conditions that are serious enough that insurance companies would deny them policies altogether without the ACA in effect.

• 109 million Americans would once again be subject to lifetime caps on coverage, according to a 2019 Brookings analysis. This would mean, for example, that one bout with a serious cancer diagnosis and treatment could  easily exceed the cap, potentially forcing a family into bankruptcy.
• 60 million Medicare beneficiaries would pay more for wellness checks, preventive care, and prescription drugs, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
• 6 million young adults would lose coverage under their parents’ policies, according to HHS.

During the vice-presidential debate on October 7, when asked point-blank to explain how the Trump administration would protect people with preexisting health conditions if the Supreme Court strikes down the Affordable Care Act, Mike Pence declined to answer, pivoting instead to attack Democrats on the subject of a woman’s right to choose. Pence never answered. Kamala Harris, on the other hand, laid out a few of the stark realities of ending the ACA, telling viewers, “[The Republicans] are coming for you.” Countless studies have assessed the consequences of the Republican plan to do away with the law, and the numbers are staggering, both because they’re enormous and because they affect every American, in the form higher costs, worse care, and/or loss of access to healthcare completely:

The criminal justice system in the U.S. is anything but just.  Brutality in policing has recently reached widespread public awareness, but that scourge is only the tip of a vast racial injustice iceberg in the U.S. and state penal systems.  Black Americans are 5.9 times more likely to be arrested than whites, despite the fact that many crimes are committed at the same rates by the two groups.   Once arrested, Black citizens are 3.5 times more likely than whites to be incarcerated in local jails prior to trial.  This is time in jail for people who have not even been convicted of a crime.

Ultimately, Black Americans are more than 5 times more likely than whites to be imprisoned.  The consequences of this new Jim Crow penal system blight Black communities across South Carolina and the entire nation.  In 2010, 33% of U.S. Black men had a felony record.  The disproportionate prison time alone is a terrible cost, but the impact on people’s lives after prison is catastrophic.

White applicants with prison records are 50% less likely to receive consideration for jobs than whites without an incarceration record, but whites with criminal records are hired more readily for jobs than Black applicants without a criminal record.   If our nation is to provide peace and opportunity for all Americans, we must value more than generic “law and order” that perpetuates a racist “justice” system.  We must commit to establishing real justice for all.

Sixty years after JFK signed the Equal Pay Act, women still don’t have it. Women make 80 cents on a dollar compared to a white man. But women of color are even more disadvantaged, with black women making 57 cents, and Latina women making 54.

That amounts to a lot of lost income over a lifetime of work. On average, white women in South Carolina will make $374,400 less than men in their lifetime. That number increases exponentially for Native women ($796,880), Asian women ($607,280), Black women ($894,600), and Latina women ($983,440).

South Carolina is one of only four states without an equal pay law.

In South Carolina, 70 percent of all women are working.  Seventy-five percent of all low-wage jobs in SC are held by woman.

The wage gap does not apply only to women in low-paying jobs. Women make up less than half of workers in management positions (44%), and they are underrepresented in computer and mathematical fields (28%), and the military (27%), architecture and engineering (11%). Of the 10 highest paying jobs in South Carolina, nine are in the medical field, yet women represent less than one-third of all physicians in the Palmetto State.

One career path where the gender discrepancy is clear is in the nursing profession. Long a bastion of professional opportunity for women, in South Carolina today the gender divide is stark. Full time nurses who are men make an average of $111,523, while female nurses make an average of $63,826.

Across the spectrum of low-paying to high-paying jobs, South Carolina women make less than men do, and their losses are compounded by the lack of benefits offered by their employers.

Women’s healthcare is often wrapped up in the question of abortion and a woman’s right to choose. Planned Parenthood had been the most reliable provider of women’s health needs for more than 100 years. But in the last decade it has been incorrectly branded as an abortion clinic and nothing more. Defunding Planned Parenthood shuts down far more than just safe abortions for those who choose them. It eliminates annual gynecological exams and mammograms, critical to women’s healh – especially in minority populations which are at higher risks of breast cancer.

The government, trying to decimate the Affordable Care Act one lawsuit at a time, has targeted women, fighting (and winning) a battle to ensure that businesses do not have to subsidize birth control. In some states that have succeeded in banning abortions for all practical purposes, legislation now goes after birth control as a abortion method. Viagara, however, is still covered by your employers insurance.

Women without healthcare, without the ability to plan their families, often end up unable to complete their educations, unable to get better paying jobs, unable to get paid sick time in the low-wage jobs they are relegated to – leaving them often with worsening conditions because they can’t take the time off to go to a doctor. When women seek child care, they can’t afford it. Federal support such as food stamps are constantly on the chopping block. The 2021 budget, proposed by President Trump, includes a 30 percent cut to the SNAP program, which provides food stamps.