The post you are reporting:
In the not too distant past the tube trains on the London underground were pretty much all smoking, with the token one or two non-smoking, carriages.
Whenever the tube-traveller had the luxury of choice no sort of actual fault could be found with this arrangement, but the vast majority of journeys were quite different. During the morning and evening rush-hour such choosing was open only to those who boarded the trains at or near their station of origin, a tiny proportion of the whole.
[Although I did not experience such rush-hour journeys from the point of view of the non-smoker I guess things were so bad that the all non-smoker policy was being actively called for long before the fire at Kings Cross.]
The point of the above anecdote is that when one found oneself aboard a smoking carriage the only cure to the choking in the throat and the stinging in the eyes, was to light-up, and I reached the conclusion that it must have been this way for most, if not all, the other passengers. While the immediate result of employing this tactic had the desired effect, can anybody dare propose that no harm was being done?
The point of the point. Are we not all, the mass of global-humankind, travelling on the smoking carriage acting just as described above? In company with the 'choosers';America, India and China.
Why do some insist on there being an actual 'conflagration', before the least contemplation of doing things differently?