Are you being hypocritical if you claim to be an environmentalist, but you smoke?

Question

How much pollution does millions and millions of cigarettes and cigars put into the air each day?

Answer 1

Yes, but not from the direct pollution standpoint. In the US alone, $100 billion dollars in healthcare and lost productivity goes up in smoke, literally. If you factor all the energy expended to produce and market tobacco, all the energy expended to purchase tobacco, and all these healthcare costs and lost productivity...applied globally measures in the trillions of dollars EVERY YEAR.

And for what?

If every scrap of tobacco disappeared tomorrow, the world would be better off. There is no benefit to tobacco other than to provide a means for some to profit off of the addiction of others. Those trillions of dollars translate into energy consumption. Energy consumption translates into burning of fossil fuels. This translate into destruction of the environment, and even more if you believe in anthropogenic global warming. For nothing.

Meanwhile, environmentalists want us to all make sacrifices by cutting back energy use in our homes that actually serves a good purpose. Cut back on the miles we drive that actually serves a purpose. Burden after burden, cost after cost, they would impose on everyone to solve a problem that may not even exist?

So, yeah, it's hypocritical for an environmentalist to smoke. They are part of a HUGE needless-consumption problem that leads to environmental destruction - and global warming of you are so inclined. They have no place asking for anyone to cut back on consumption of ANYTHING if they are unwilling to eliminate their needless vice.

When you think of it, though, it's entirely consistent:
Smokers have the egocentric view that their bad habits are none of anyone's business - when in fact they are making it EVERYBODY'S business by imposing the cost of their poor choices on society. Global Warming Alarmists are so egocentric that they would impose THEIR solutions on EVERYONE with no regards to how it will cost society.

All that being said, I AM NOT for a nanny state. I think smokers can come to their own conclusions about their habits. Being a member of society will always have its drawbacks, and ALL OF US will impose our burdens on others at some point in time - so I don't hold anything against smokers. Hypocrites, on the other hand...

Answer 2

How many people can say that they truly live up to their own values. You can care and believe in something and still not be "perfect". we all have our faults, and when addiction is thrown into the mix, it makes it a more of an obstacle to live up to ones values. I recycle (yet I occasionally guiltily throw out a peanut butter jar because i don't want to scrub it out). I have an electric lawnmover, solar powered gadgets, and i carpool( yet i smoke). It's important to do the best you can, but even when not perfect, at least being aware and trying is more than some people do, therefore "hypocritical" may be true, but harsh. I do not use the world as my ashtray (never throw butts on the ground or out the car window), I don't smoke around non-smokers. Basically smoke in my home and car.I roll my own cigarrettes to avoid the additives and packaging. And of course hope to one day be a non-smoker.

Answer 3

A good question and one that may perhaps be best answered by means of comparison - with some surprising results.

Each cigarette that a person smokes produces about the same volume of pollutants as driving a car 11 feet, a person who smokes 20 cigarettes a day creates as much air pollution in a year as driving an average car for 15 miles.

To answer your question specifically - a standard cigarette weighs 1.136 grams of which 0.871 grams is tobacco, 0.057 grams is paper and the rest is the filter. The weight of material burned is 0.928 grams per cigarette smoked (assuming it's smoked right to the filter). The average smoker gets through 14 cigarettes a day, or 12.992 grams of product burned.

I can't find figures for the total number of smokers in the world but extrapolating from national figures the number is likely to be 18 or 19% of the 6.5 billion inhabitants on Earth - or about 1.2 billion people.

This many people burning 13g of tobacco and cigarette papers a day makes for an overall daily total of 15,622,880,000 grams of air pollution per day.

So, the average smoker produces 13g a day of smoking related air pollution but at the same time produces 68,380g of pollution from other sources.

Looked at another way, for each uinit of smoking related air pollution there's about 28,000 units of air pollution from other sources.

Note that the above calculations are based only on volume and do not take account of toxicity or other factors.

Answer 4

Thoroughly enjoyed Trevor, crabby_ blind guy & Lily's responses and just to add to theirs, there's more pollution spewed by the Kilauea volcano on the Big Island, Hawai'i in one day than the annual contribution of smokers in the entire world.

The taxes that are being assessed against smokers are making great contributions to many health related programs, take those taxes away and the non-smokers who are now getting a free ride will have to step in and cover those expenses which are not inconsiderable.

Add to that Al Gore's 20X more electrical use than the rest of us and the amount of pollution he creates every time he opens his mouth and then let's talk about hypocrisy, shall we?

Every time he charters a private jet to take him somewhere to tout his movie, and enhance his pocketbook, he' creating more pollutants and consumption than any smoker will in a lifetime.

When one of the foremost meteorological scientist's who heads up his department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, joined by the leading scientists in Canada, France and the UK decry the findings of the so called experts of the UN, I'll cast my vote for them, not the bunch of naysayer economists who want to blame the USA for the world's ills.

Answer 5

No--because its a tiny amount, compared to what evena few thousand cars or one coal power plant emits.

Stop and think--nationally in the US--a few thousand tons of tobacco a year--versus billions of tons of coal and oil. And--the plants removed the CO2 the cigarettes release from the atmosphere in the first place wen farmers grew them (which means that, like ethanol, there's no net COw2 added to the air.

Not that that will sto p the anti-smoking nuts.

I'm not endorsing cigarettes--they aare a health risk. But these people have gone way off the deep end--and that kind of silliness is just one more example.

Answer 6

Yes, it's very hypocritical. It's so bad for everyone. I don't really know how much pollution, I'm sure a lot though.

Answer 7

I'd say that you are more hypocritical if you say you are an environmentalist and drive a car but I get your point.

Answer 8

How about all the land used to grow tobacco that could be used for better things, like food that would fee hungry people?

And if you throw butts on the ground, you don't deserve to live on this planet.

Answer 9

As long as you smoke organically grown tobacco and create awareness of global warming during smoke breaks, you get a pass.

Answer 10

Smoking is a drop in the ocean; but I am a smoker and so I would say that, would I not?