Bill "we're all gonna die" McKibben is frustrated.

But twice last week I acted in ways entirely out of character. I signed a letter criticizing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for his New York Times op-ed opposing the big Cape Wind project. And I wrote a few paragraphs disparaging the most powerful of my local environmental groups, the Adirondack Council, for the way they'd worked on clean-air issues. Both criticisms were respectful -- I am my mother's son -- but they were also stern. . .

They were also, at some level, divisive. In both cases, you could truthfully say I was willing to inflict a little damage on an important part of the environmental movement. It doesn't mean, I hope, that I'm growing a mean streak. I think it means something else: that the environmental movement is reaching an important point of division, between those who truly get global warming, and those who don't.

By get, I don't mean understanding the chemistry of carbon dioxide, or the importance of the Kyoto Protocol, or something like that -- pretty much everyone who thinks of themselves as an environmentalist has reached that point. By get, I mean understanding that the question is of transcending urgency, that it represents the one overarching global civilizational challenge that humans have ever faced. That it's as big as the Bomb.

I've always thought of McKibben as one of the meanest folks around, completely insensitive to other humans and indifferent to their concerns - a sociopath in other words - so it's surprising to hear how he thinks of himself. But he has a point. There are paleo-environmentalists who truly see climate change as being "like the bomb".

And that's revealing since while they were worrying about the bomb, or the population bomb, or any number of other emergencies de jour over the past couple of decades - nuclear winter? - the climate has been changing, heating up in ways that have a human signature. In each instance their analysis of the issue was deeply mistaken and their prescriptions for policy were ludicrous - mean spirited as well as ineffective.

Their analysis errors have a pattern that is relevant to the current situation: they obsess about some bogey while ignoring equally important issues that require attention and interact with their bogey in complex ways. Their prescription errors have a pattern as well, one that Donella Meadows at long last realized, late in life after having been repeatedly mistaken during her career.

People who are raised in the industrial world and who get enthused about systems thinking are likely to make a terrible mistake. They are likely to assume that here, in systems analysis, in interconnection and complication, in the power of the computer, here at last, is the key to prediction and control. This mistake is likely because the mindset of the industrial world assumes that there is a key to prediction and control.

I assumed that at first too. We all assumed it, as eager systems students at the great institution called MIT. More or less innocently, enchanted by what we could see through our new lens, we did what many discoverers do. We exaggerated our own ability to change the world.

But there is no key to prediction and control, and wanting one is a childish desire that reveals a deep misunderstanding about the nature of reality, a sort of disengagement - magical thinking - that is supposed to be put away at childhood's end along with other cherished childhood illusions such as tooth fairies.

Paleo-environmentalists, the McKibben brigade and fellow travelers, simply aren't good at what they do. That wasn't a huge problem in the past because the problems they worked weren't very important. It was okay to have second stringers working on background and often illusory problems. But climate change, water, land, food, people, energy and the whole related complex of issues are becoming increasingly important as we approach peak population of 9 billion or so and the majority of humanity makes progress on material development. We need good management at this point.

Paleo-environmentalists wail that they are losing influence and being ignored but there is good reason to do so. Their bad analyses and silly prescriptions aren't up to the task at hand. They think idiotic political side-show pork-barrel projects like Kyoto are important. They are not. Worse, I think, their methods are divisive and too confused with their political and religious beliefs. They alienate large segments of society and pursue counterproductive strategies intended to support their political and religious beliefs using environmental issues as a wedge.

We need to bring in the first stringers, the ones capable of multi-dimensional and non-linear thinking because that is what is required. We can't solve our problems one at a time in priority, we have to work them all at once while recognizing how they impact one another, even sometimes seeming to reverse progress on some things though the system as a whole advances. McKibben and his ilk aren't up to this. No panicked, second rate thinkers are up to this. It may be more than any single person can do to juggle the whole complex in their mind at once, but anyone can grasp that it is necessary to work them all, that they depend on one another. For example, it will do us no good to reduce emissions while losing our liberty since that will end in rebellion and collapse . . . and even greater emissions.

There may be brilliant folks who can do it alone, but I suspect that a team effort is required. I also suspect that it is teams of teams that form and dissolve in an ad-hoc and task oriented manner as the system of systems changes states over time. The most important attribute of first string thinkers may well be the ability to hold their mud and not panic as McKibben is doing. It takes courage as well as intelligence to grasp that you must trust others to do their part, as they must trust you to do yours. Part of that trust is truth telling, avoiding the lie-to-the-infidel habits of politicized dark siders like McKibben. You may not understand how your information will be used by the social mind - it is exceedingly unlikely that anyone can understand so much - so there's no way for you to lie usefully, no way to even lie for what you think is your advantage. All you do is pollute the information cloud and cause needless trouble for yourself and others.

Intelligence, courage, honesty, team play - those are all skills that have been in short supply in paleo-environmentalism. We need a better quality of environmentalist for the issues we now face.