Old Mole Variety Hour for November 22, 2021

Sharon Grant hosts this episode of the Old Mole, which includes the following segments:

COP 26: Climate change is accelerating, relentlessly, making human life much less comfortable and indeed, say the climate scientists, threatening to produce the 6^th Great Extinction including all the higher apes. As Joe Biden and others said in advance, the 26^th annual Conference on Climate Change in Glasgow was “the last best chance to save the planet.”  The Old Mole’s Bill Resnick asks his guest Tina Gerhardt (a climate change researcher and journalist who observed the Glasgow conference): Do we now have a binding agreement with enforcement and a doable plan for stopping global warming. “No” was her answer, far from it. But some small gains were made and the protests outside were uniting around a feasible program.

The Left and the Law: In their Left and the Law segment, Jan Haaken and Mike Snedeker discuss recent judgements in a case brought by Chevron in a NYC Federal court against environmental lawyer Steven Donziger who represented indigenous Ecuadorans in their suit against Chevron for environmental damage from oil drilling in the Amazon. In July of this year, a US District judge found Donziger guilty of contempt of court.  After serving over 800 days under house arrest, he began a six-month prison term in late October. Jan and Mike talk about the significance of this case for Indigenous rights and the international fight against Big Oil.

Crisis Work in our Healthcare System: End of Life Caregiving during the Pandemic: Healthcare workers have felt the shocks of disaster capitalism for nearly two years. The demands covid has placed on our already broken healthcare system have shifted the way in which people are seeking care for illness and the conditions of their death. Sarah Chivers speaks with Sarah Hickman, a palliative caregiver and social worker in Vancouver. They discuss structural problems in our healthcare system, the labor conditions faced by healthcare workers, and the toll of crisis work on workers on the frontlines.