KATHMANDU, MARCH 15

When calculating the existential risk posed by ocean acidification, the movie "Don't Look Up" comes to mind. How do we alert people to this looming crisis? Most people don't even know what ocean acidification is.

Ocean acidification is caused by too much carbon being dissolved in the ocean, making the ocean increasingly acidic. The excess carbon is absorbed into the ocean from the atmosphere due to carbon emissions.

This acidification impacts marine life and biochemical processes which are essential to regulating our global environment. The current rate of increasing acidity in the oceans is 10 times faster than anything experienced in the last 300 million years, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. A recent article in Nature stated that even under a stringent emissions scenario, "warm-water corals will be at high risk by 2100. Under our current rate of emissions, most marine organisms evaluated will have very high risk of impacts by 2100 and many by 2050."

A version of this article appears in the print on March 16, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.