Yes; however, smoking can both cause coughing and irritate the esophagus and lungs ultimately causing coughing.

What? extinction is the total annihilation of a species. In terms of humans, if there were no males or females left to reproduce with, that would ultimately cause our extinction.

It is worn away easily, often causing silt build-up in rivers and strams which take it to the sea and ultimately kill our coral.

An ethical gap is an actual gap in a company where ethics are concerned. They may say and act one way but ultimately they do another, thus causing a gap of ethics to form.

In "A Poison Tree," the two ways of handling anger mentioned are talking about it with the person causing the anger, which can resolve the issue and lead to forgiveness; and keeping the anger bottled up, which can lead to it growing and consuming the individual, ultimately causing harm.