“Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?”

– Edward Lorenz, chaos theory pioneer

Recently, I’ve reflected on the truism that “nothing is guaranteed.”

This is because a friend challenged the premise of my latest column. There I compared the current environmentalists’ struggle to change “the system” – the environmentally destructive way we pursue commerce – to the 19th-century abolitionists’ struggle to end slavery.

I said that by writing, lecturing and demonstrating the abolitionists raised the American public’s awareness about the evils of slavery. Over a few short decades, they created a social milieu from which strong, unprecedented anti-slavery forces arose to abolish the deeply entrenched institution.

I argued that by creating a similar milieu of environmental awareness, activists could at least hope to reverse our downward slide into global environmental devastation and climate chaos. Thus, everyone should do his or her part to help create that milieu – become informed, educate others, propose alternatives, protest – knowing that those efforts are part of a larger whole from which solutions can emerge.

But my friend pointed out that even if environmental awareness and activism grows to the point where it could spawn narratives and movements with enough power to bring about change, there is no assurance that they would emerge.

True enough. There are no guarantees, and many social movements have failed.

The Luddite movement of the early 18th-century England is of special interest in this context, because of both its failure and the nature of its objective, which was to slow the development of the industrial revolution. The Luddites were traditional artisans who used a variety of tactics, including guerilla actions and sabotaging machinery, to try forcing industrialists to abandon mechanization in favor of more traditional methods of production.

Unlike the abolitionist movement, however, the Luddites not only failed in their objective but brought the wrath of the British government, which was controlled by the industrialists, down upon their heads. An 1812 law made destroying machinery a capital crime, and a number of Luddites were executed or deported to penal colonies, effectively ending the movement.

Although the Luddites’ methods of destroying property and taking up arms are against the principles of almost all modern environmentalists, their cause – humanizing and slowing the means of production – still resonates. But modern environmentalists, by contrast, have a global perspective, and want to slow mechanized production not just to provide more meaningful, secure employment but also to slow the depletion of resources – ideally, to balance their depletion with their replenishment.

It has been argued that without the imposition of a global dictatorship – and indeed some people mistakenly fear that environmentalists seek just that – any such reduction of commerce will prove impossible in the face of the overweening materialism of the world’s “haves” and the material yearnings of its “have nots.”

Perhaps.

Environmentalists face the arduous task of convincing people that enough is enough: that once they securely have met their basic needs – food, clothing, housing and so on – further material acquisition is not only unnecessary but can be unhealthy, a form of addiction to “stuff” that interferes with their social and spiritual life; that we can live a better life, one where a sustainable economy preserves our planet while providing for our material security and emotional and spiritual well-being.

Is it possible to bring about such a shift in consciousness?

At a recent gathering, a friend explained what “keeps him going” in the face of what appear to be overwhelming odds against saving the planet.

“It’s the butterfly effect,” he said. “The idea that if the conditions are right, a tiny perturbation, like a butterfly flapping its wings, can bring about a huge change in a system, such as a hurricane in a distant ocean. If we continue to create the conditions for change, perhaps that butterfly will flap its wings at just the right time. That’s how I find my purpose in life.”

So it turns out there is one guarantee, the exception that proves the rule: If we do nothing, nothing will change. But if we do what we can to foster change, and listen very carefully, we just might hear the sound of a butterfly dancing through the air at our ecological house.

Philip S. Wenz, who grew up in Durango and Boulder, now lives in Corvallis, Ore., where he teaches and writes about environmental issues. Reach him via e-mail through his website, www.your-ecological-house.com.