A world dying, but can we unite to save it?

Pollution in the seas is now speeding global warming, says a devastating new climate report. Humanity is rapidly turning the seas acid through the same pollution that causes global warming, the world's governments and top scientists agreed yesterday. The process – thought to be the most profound change in the chemistry of the oceans for 20 million years – is expected both to disrupt the entire web of life of the oceans and to make climate change worse.

The warning is just one of a whole series of alarming conclusions in a new report published by the official Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which last month shared the Nobel Peace Prize with former US vice president Al Gore.

Drawn up by more than 2,500 of the world's top scientists and their governments, and agreed last week by representatives of all its national governments, the report also predicts that nearly a third of the world's species could be driven to extinction as the world warms up, and that harvests will be cut dramatically across the world.

United Nations Secretary- General Ban Ki-moon, who attended the launch of the report in this ancient Spanish city, told The Independent on Sunday that he found the "quickening pace" of global warming "very frightening".

And, with unusual outspokenness for a UN leader, he said he "looked forward" to both the United States and China – the world's two biggest polluters – "playing a more constructive role" in vital new negotiations on tackling climate change that open in Indonesia next month.

The new IPCC report, which is designed to give impetus to the negotiations, highlights the little-known acidification of the oceans, first reported in this newspaper more than three years ago. It concludes that emissions of carbon dioxide – the main cause of global warming – have already increased the acidity of ocean surface water by 30 per cent, and threaten to treble it by the end of the century.

Achim Steiner, the executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), said yesterday: "The report has put a spotlight on a threat to the marine environment that the world has hardly yet realised. The threat is immense as it can fundamentally alter the life of the seas, reducing the productivity of the oceans, while reinforcing global warming."

More from The Independent