Hollywood Shows That It’s ‘Green’--Up to a Point : Awards: Car pooling was not the order of the day as the industry showed up for the Environmental Media Awards.

At the second annual Environmental Media Awards ceremony at Sony Studios Wednesday night, the $500-a-plate industry crowd did some serious empathizing with the wildlife they were gathered to help preserve--specifically, with the crane , as studio honchos strained their necks in pack-like unison, looking for their limos in the long post-awards valet line.

“In the spirit of the evening, we urge you to please car pool,” invitations to the gala nudgingly requested. They might as well have asked execs to pool their best high-concept script ideas.

Personal transportation may be the last frontier of guiltlessness in consumption-phobic ‘90s Hollywood. But inside the soundstage where 700 players gathered to eat and fete, the program was designed to demonstrate that, on and off screen, the visual media are taking seriously the crises affecting the environment--singling out nominees whose TV programs or films have set off the public alarm, as well as honoring entertainment executives responsible for private philanthropy.

The challenge has been taken up. Thus “L.A. Law,” which won for television episodic drama, portrays the prosecution of a corporation that carelessly endangers its workers with contaminants. “Dinosaurs,” a winner in the television episodic comedy category, spoofs corporate polluters as well. Characters on soap-category winner “Days of Our Lives” evolve into speechifying activists.

Ted Turner has his twice-nominated Captain Planet action hero save kids from environmentally exploitive supervillains. And “FernGully . . . The Last Rainforest,” the feature film honoree, animatedly explicates the vaguely spiritual theme explored by keynote speaker Dr. David Suzuki, a “sense of kinship with all beings on the planet.”

The western arm of the Republican convention this wasn’t: “Sustainable development is an oxymoron,” Suzuki told the crowd, warning that the proclivity for growth is “the equivalent of a malignant cancer. . . . The eco-crisis will take more than just recycling and being efficient. We have to cut back.”

The growing trendiness of the movement in the Earth Summit age did not go unremarked upon.

“We’re living in an age in which almost everyone considers themselves environmentalists,” said Disney President Frank Wells, who, with his wife, Luanne, was being honored with an ongoing commitment award. “Including, as we’ve often heard, our President.” (Slight hisses.) “But this (acceptance) is a mixed blessing,” he warned, decrying the fashionability of rhetoric in the absence of concrete steps.

Of course, not everyone in the hinterland is eager to jump on the bandwagon. In his eloquent address, Wells also quoted from letters he said he’d received threatening the boycott of Disney parks and products because of his environmental activism. Despite the surface glamour of the cause, “if you really get out there and go for it, you’re likely to get attacked,” Wells pointed out.

Perhaps fearful of being attacked for overearnestness, many of the presenters and honorees did their best to wax irreverent, with recycling gags being the order of the day--as in host Sinbad warning diners they’d soon be recycling their vegetarian dinners, or a “Dinosaurs” writer promising Disney would be recycling episodes in syndication, et al.

Two longstanding members of the musical activist set briefly recycled some of their favorite numbers, too. Longtime environmental pop poet-laureate Jackson Browne and band serenaded the crowd with three songs before dinner, with Bonnie Raitt joining him on “World in Motion.” At evening’s end, an unscheduled Raitt capped the evening with “Angel From Montgomery,” bringing dozens of early departers who’d stampeded for the valets stampeding back inside to hear her.

Sinbad, who made a running gag out of wanting a gig, remarked that he had his camper parked outside and would “like to take some studio heads home, if you need a ride.”

Though car pooling--or camper pooling--still seems to be anathema even among the progressive, many celebrities did forgo the limo route, with a lot of 4x4s and fuel-efficient mid-size luxury cars in line amid the BMWs. At least one prominent actor was overheard singing the praises of his new pickup truck, while admitting that the trade-in had as much to do with car-jacking fears as toxins.