Mitzi watched the Diana Nyad bio-pic on Netflix yesterday, and I saw the latter half. As I recall, "courage" was something of a war-cry or motto for her. I also admired her "resilience" and "never quit" attitude.

I think we can all find something inspirational in Diana Nyad's example, especially in the effort and sacrifice she made to achieve her dream.

Because, while we're supposedly beginning to confront the reality of our situation, it isn't clear to me that we really have.

I watched this TED Talk last night. It's from back in April of this year. It's worth a listen.

Sounds great, right? It does. But, it's a gloss. I liked her formulation that any sustainable solution must allow for a decent life for all people.

She doesn't go into any specifics about how we would go about delivering a decent life to all people, using entrenched institutions and economic systems that are founded and predicated on the notion of persistent inequality, and which incentivize the worst characteristics of human behavior.

Here's a much shorter read, which is more honest and accurate about the genuine scope of the challenge that confronts her generation.

I'm not saying that her generation is incapable of meeting that challenge. I hope they are. But they will never even try, unless they understand what it really is.

And that's why I think it's important to talk about not only the climate, environmental degradation, inequality and systemic inequity, but how we got here as well. Because we can't rely on the mechanisms that created the problem to solve it.

And it's going to take all the courage and sacrifice they can muster to meet that challenge.

And never quit.