Jonathon Delacour the heart of things

Smokers are selfish scum

Summer has hardly commenced and Sydney is again ringed by bushfires described as the worst in the last 20 years. A combination of high temperatures, low humidity, and strong winds has led to dozens of serious fires on the outskirts of the metropolitan area. Parents have been advised to keep their children at home, the rail system is in chaos, and major roads are closed (including the main highways to the north and west).

Yesterday I spent the day working in North Sydney, across the harbor. I arrived at the railway station around 6pm, expecting to catch a train back to Newtown where I live, only to find that services were suspended. Bushfires under powerlines had caused problems with the electricity grid, leading to signal failures. The trains had ground to a halt. I was lucky. I took a pleasant two kilometer walk across the Harbor Bridge from North Sydney to the CBD and caught a bus home. Hundreds of thousands of rail commuters were trapped on trains for a couple of hours or more. Other Sydneysiders lost everything they owned.

It is believed that most of the fires were the result of human behavior: either deliberate or from acts of negligence. Tonight the State Premier appealed to smokers not to discard lit cigarette butts from moving vehicles, warning that they faced criminal charges and 14-year jail sentences.

Smokers really are selfish scum. They pollute the air and despoil the landscape with discarded cigarette packages and butts, putting their need for a nicotine fix above the comfort and health of most of the population. The only thing that can be said in their favor is that the tax on tobacco products more than covers the cost of their inevitable need for medical care.

You’d think that even the most inconsiderate arsehole would think twice before tossing a smoldering match or cigarette butt into tinder-dry bushland in the middle of a heatwave. They don’t. If only their homes and cherished possessions were destroyed by fire, as well as their hearts and lungs. (On second thought, maybe they don’t have hearts—just polluted, festering lungs.)

Update. Dave Winer takes me to task in the comments on this post for failing to make the distinction “between smokers who start fires and the vast majority of smokers who don’t.” Fair point: sweeping generalizations like the one I made are neither reasonable nor helpful—though Dave’s plea for tolerance would merit more consideration if smokers didn’t appear to be so monumentally indifferent to the discomfort their habit causes those who must inhale secondhand smoke.

(For the record, although I’m happy to live in a state where smoking is forbidden in restaurants and I’m equally relieved it’s been banned by most airlines, I don’t support banning smoking in pubs or clubs—that seems unnecessarily harsh. As long as smoking remains legal, smokers should be able to enjoy their habit in at least some public places. Nor am I opposed to cigarette advertising; if a product is legal, its manufacturer should be free to advertise it. I accept the inconsistency of my position, preferring to see it as pragmatic. Banning cigarettes entirely would be no more practical than Prohibition was in Twenties America.)

As for smokers who throw lit butts from their cars, reading a review of Keith Bradsher’s book, High and Mighty led me to think that perhaps it’s smokers who drive SUVs who are the culprits. Bradsher says that research by automakers reveals SUV buyers to be:

insecure and vain. They are frequently nervous about their marriages and uncomfortable about parenthood. They often lack confidence in their driving skills. Above all, they are apt to be self-centered and self-absorbed, with little interest in their neighbors and communities.

This Salon interview with Keith Bradsher offers persuasive evidence that SUVs pollute and kill. Like cigarettes.

More. Smokers aren’t to blame at all, argues Sydney Morning Herald columnist Miranda Devine, it’s the fault of Premier Bob Carr and the Greens:

We all need a scapegoat right now as NSW burns. But I suggest we make it the guy with the deep voice and the hard hat who has been touring burnt-out suburbs.

Carr has presided over seven years of green-inspired neglect of proper fire management of bushland in NSW, creating an environment exquisitely vulnerable to arson attack, or the careless flick of a cigarette, or a spark from a car exhaust.

She hasn’t twigged to the SUV angle, though.

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