Thanks on briefing us what happened. Here in Amsterdam, The Netherlands where I live, producing such amounts of smoke is simply illegal in a residential area. If you did that kind of thing here, you would get in trouble with the council authorities, because of violation of environment laws, and if you persisted, you could be fined and your business license could in principle be revoked.

I tried for a bit of blog in NYT on “socialism in 2009″ which you may find of interest (reproduced here):

155. September 19, 2009 6:45 pm Link
From a European perspective, as a thumbnail sketch, socialism in 2009 is essentially about the question of which forms of organisation can ensure that cooperation between people can prevail over competition – such that all individuals and members of society, not just privileged people, can lead constructive lives and reach their potential. The argument is that in preceding decades, cooperation and competition have become very seriously misaligned in every sphere of society, giving rise to very unhealthy forms of cooperation and very unhealthy forms of competition. Cooperation and competition can obviously be voluntary and free, or forced directly and coerced by circumstances. An effect of the misalignment is that the relationship between “rights” and “duties” has also become very misaligned in society. There can be no rights without duties (social responsibilities, social obligations) and no duties without rights (including individual freedoms). These rights and duties can however obviously also be voluntary negotiated or forced on people, and they can be unequally and irrationally distributed. In this situation socialists aim to act culturally and politically to achieve progress in the matters of liberty, social equality and social solidarity. In the opinion of socialists, individuals are not simply isolated atoms in a larger whole, but can sustain themselves as individuals only by being socially related. The overall objective is to work for a progressive change in the relationship between individuals and the society of which they are part, such that society functions better, not just for some, but for all. Socialism attracts people from all strata of society who share these concerns and seek to give them a definite form, through doing something about them. However, it attracts especially people who in one way or another have felt oppressed, injured or exploited by society as it is, and who feel they cannot succeed except by both changing themselves, and by changing social circumstances in one process, i.e. by working for social change in some way in line with the mentioned principles. This means they are prepared to turn some private troubles into public issues, with the argument that these private or individual troubles cannot be resolved unless they are treated as public issues, as matters that should be of social concern, and tackled collectively. Inversely, they aim to make public troubles their individual concern. However, there is no consensus among all socialists about policy, and there are many different strategies being pursued. That is to say, socialists themselves are also afflicted with the problems mentioned above, such that cooperation between them is often not so easy to achieve. Sometimes persuasion influences them to cooperate, but it could also be that the situation forces them to cooperate, because it is realised that this is the only way that people are going to make progress.

— Jurriaan Bendien http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/18/what-socialism-means-to-the-masses/?hp&apage=7