> Indirectly, we all kill, all the time. How?

dredmorbius · on March 2, 2015

Resource deprivation. Competition. For a number of major nations, foreign wars.

For those in any of the member states of the "Coalition of the Willing", the illegal and unjustified war of aggression against Iraq has resulted in as many as 600,000 deaths (Lancet). That's one for every 512 Americans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War#Ove...

And that's merely human deaths. If you include animals slaughtered or killed in the name of humans (for food or as a consequence of human activity) it's tremendous.

It's about 35 million cattle.

116 millon pigs.

9 billion chickens.

271 million turkeys.

http://www.animalliberationfront.com/Practical/FactoryFarm/U...

And that's for food production.

If you look at wild birds, the numbers are pretty crazy.

100 - 120 million by hunters.

175 million by power transmission lines.

365 million to 1 billion by windows and buildings.

Again: hundreds of millions to a billion creatures killed by what is effectively static structures.

200 million to 3.7 billion by domestic cats.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_wind_p...

I'm not condemning this, actually. As I said, it's a fact of life.

But yes, we kill. All the time.

maxerickson · on March 2, 2015

If we are going to discard the contextual meaning from above (people killing people) we should include the billions of yeast I baked alive the other day. And all the microorganisms I'm digesting incidentally.

dredmorbius · on March 2, 2015

Yes, I'd include those.

Life inevitably kills and destroys. Eventually itself.

maxerickson · on March 2, 2015

Under the umbrella of "anyone"?