I never cease to be amazed by how time flies when I'm fully engaged in a task. One moment the day is young and I'm fresh but the next thing I know it's dark and I'm drained. Some people seem to live their whole lives without ever looking up to notice that the world has changed while they had their noses to the stone.

Environmental activists and scientists have both documented, and responded strongly against, human encroachment upon "natural" systems. They are, in other words, fighting against the tail of the asymptotic curves of the material and energy revolutions. But they have entirely failed to engage with the information revolution, a powerfully accelerating technological phenomenon that may well obsolete current mental models of environmentalism entirely. After all, when the power structure of the world is urbanized, fed by ICT systems and constructed content rather than observation of "natural" systems, and embedded in a number of virtual worlds of choice -- elements of modernity which are being instantiated now, not in some imaginary future -- it may well be that designing "nature" to support virtuality, rather than preserving "nature," becomes environmentalism. Whether this is a good thing is indeed open to question; but it can no longer be blithely ignored.

Unfortunately, it is being ignored.

As the 20th century drew to a close, leaders in the field of ecology decided they were failing at one of their primary goals. They had presented sign after sign that people were harming the environment — killing off species, destroying rain forests, polluting the air and water — but the warnings had little effect. So, to encourage conservation, they decided to appeal to humanity's baser instincts.

More than 1,300 scientists and social scientists spent four years on a project that shows people exactly what the environment does for them.

Called the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, the enormous project looks at whether those benefits, dubbed ecosystem services, have strengthened or weakened in the past 50 years. And the report peers into the future, forecasting whether the services will continue to sustain human life. In another 50 years, will the planet provide enough food, wood, water for its inhabitants?

"Making that link between ecosystems and humans was really crucial. It's an anthropocentric viewpoint," says Harold A. Mooney, a professor of biological sciences at Stanford University and co-chair of the panel that ran the study. "It has much more meaning to many more people."

The assessment found a major incongruity: While ecosystems have suffered more damage in the past 50 years than in any other 50 years in history, people are now healthier, more secure, and freer than ever before. But because those gains in well-being have come at increasing costs to the environment, the ecologists predict that the natural world will one day be incapable of providing the resources people need. Already, people suffer in pockets of the globe as the desert encroaches, droughts strike, and floods overwhelm.

"If you look at the total picture, it gives you a sense of real warning," says Mr. Mooney. "We can't go on like this."

I've criticized paleo and pseudo environmentalists for exploiting environmental issues to advance their tenuously connected political agendas that are often detrimental to the environment and seldom helpful. The details of their political agendas matter little since these aren't political problems. All the energy they spend in the vain effort to frighten the public into granting them the power they seek is wasted. Even if they get the power it won't result in environmental benefits.

Politics is the wrong tool, and politicians fail to engage with reality. It's not just a rueful joke that they are always trying to solve yesterday's problems while today's problems hang fire. Many societies are struggling to reform themselves to become less inept in these matters by devolving decision making to localities which can respond more quickly and appropriately to their precise needs, and by becoming more interactive, responsive and structured to learn and adapt. But they will fail. By the time they reform to be less clumsy at dealing with today's problems it will be tomorrow.

In order of magnitude terms, learning to manage materials has taken about 100,000 years; energy, 1,000 years; and information may be estimated at perhaps 100 years. The latter may seem too short: consider, however, the speed with which biological information is being converted to intellectual property, or the growth of institutions such as Google and the Net, and it is at least a reasonable estimate.

Ponderous, old fashioned paleo-environmentalism - even its most fashion forward parts such as the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment - can't get its pants on and get into the street before the day is over in these fast and accelerating times. They may be hard working and sincere but they are going about it all wrong. They carefully sharpen their knives to prepare for a battle that will be fought with automatic slug throwers.

They need to abandon the broadcast approach, the lecture approach, the power and authority controlling approach. Professors versed in the canon aren't useful in these fast times. What is needed instead is legions of research librarians to serve the needs of those who are engaged in productive activity. The librarians don't set the agenda, they respond helpfully to the agendas of those who show up at their desks looking for information. Such librarians aren't less intelligent, trained or creative than the old fashioned professor - they may in fact be more skilled and capable - but their job is different and far more appropriate to the need and speed of the times. They will influence outcomes by applying their considerable skill and knowledge to insightful satisfaction of often ill formed queries.

One day that job will be automated too, but not soon.