The Blue Planet’s Lifeblood: A Finite Flow

It is impossible to enter Water: H2O = Life, the exhibition opening tomorrow at the American Museum of Natural History, and not feel excitement at its possibilities. You walk into darkened space where a tumbling aqua-lighted waterfall seems to descend from the ceiling; letters projected on its turbulent surface spell water in multiple languages.

The Blue Planet Earth: Science on a Sphere shows views of earth.

This is affecting and clever because the seeming cascade really is formed of water in its vaporous state. And you cannot pass through that curtain of mist without taking some notice of waters extraordinary qualities: Like few other substances on earth, the show points out, water can exist as a solid, liquid and gas at everyday temperatures and pressures.

By the projected words you are also quickly made aware of waters power to flow beyond national boundaries. The exhibition — created by Eleanor Sterling, director of the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation at the museum, in conjunction with the Science Museum of Minnesota and other science museums — is also meant to have a global reach. It will travel to South America, Asia, Australia and other locations in North America. Its objects include a meteorite from Australia (containing 15 percent water), live Southeast Asian mudskippers (fish that carry water in their bodies as they slither onto land) , a pipe fragment from Mexico used to irrigate fields some 1,500 years ago, and a display devoted to the environmental impact of the Three Gorges Dam in China, the worlds largest concrete structure. And given the exhibitions concerns with environmental education, there is also much here that will attract younger visitors, who may not always be prepared for immersion into the watery realm of environmental debate.

But the exhibition also inspires considerable frustration. It presents a free-flowing flood of data and has an overly insistent and predictable message. That message is, admittedly, a virtuous one, because water, the exhibition points out, is not a renewable resource. What exists on earth now is the only water we will ever have, and less than 1 percent of it is available for human use. In 27 countries, most in Asia and Africa, convenient water is unavailable to half the population; meanwhile many rivers there are polluted with sludge, and even the Ganges, the sacred river of India, harbors harmful waste.

Problems of access, purity and misuse have been aggravated, the exhibition suggests, by the very innovations meant to ameliorate them. During the last 50 years 47,000 large dams have been built around the world, supplying 20 percent of the worlds electric power. But dams disrupt wildlife, block migration routes and displace human communities. In addition, the show says, most irrigation dams deliver less water and are less profitable than expected.

Industrial activity has caused other ecological disasters. A stark room contains models of tufa towers — unearthly pillars of limestone — left exposed at Mono Lake in California, after water was diverted to Los Angeles in the 1940s. A childrens game suggests that the melting of Arctic ice from global warming is making life hazardous for polar bears. And aquatic animals, were told, make up about 60 percent of all endangered species in the U.S.

Industrialized society (particularly in the United States) bears the brunt of the blame. How much water is used daily per capita, for example, in different countries? A display shows that 151 gallons a person per day are used in the United States for domestic and municipal use, 118 gallons are used in Britain and just 10 in Ethiopia. Then, a game-show-like quiz on video screens asks which beverage takes the most water to produce, including water used to grow and process the plants: coffee, orange juice or tea? The answer: coffee, one cup of which contains 74 gallons of virtual water. Cattle farmers are even more water-profligate because of all the grain used as feed: 600 gallons of water are poured into the average hamburger.

But if modern society creates problems, dont count on technology to solve them. Consider desalination, which makes seawater potable. Though its environmental costs, such as marine organisms sucked into intake pipes, are difficult to quantify, the exhibition says, they may be serious.

What Can We Do? asks one panel. The only people who seem to be living in aquatic harmony here are nonindustrialized cultures: a diorama of the Tonle Sap, a lake and river system in Cambodia, shows homes floating atop pontoons on a freshwater lake; inhabitants celebrate the water and its plentiful harvest of fish.

Water: H2O = Life opens tomorrow and runs through May 26 at the American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West and 79th Street; amnh.org; (212) 769-5100 or (212) 769-5200. Timed tickets are $22; $16.50 for students and 60+; and $13 for 12 and younger.

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