Cafe Installs Doomsday Clock : Environment: Tote board at Beverly and La Cienega flashes a minute-by-minute litany of rain forest destruction and human population increase.

By DAVID FERRELL

Jan. 31, 1992 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

“It’s scary, man.”

Warren Montelibano turned silent as he watched the handwriting on the wall--or, more precisely, as he stared at the numbers flashing on the big electronic tote board. Newly situated above one of Los Angeles’ busiest street corners, the $75,000, computerized sign burned with two graphic reminders of a troubled world: “ACRES OF RAINFOREST NOW . . . 1,996,362,331. WORLD POPULATION NOW . . . 5,401,201,514.”

Each second, the rain forest total ticked downward by one--and world population jumped by nearly three.

“We’re going to run out of space,” Montelibano, 23, quickly concluded, stopping only briefly this week before hurrying toward a nearby office building.

The sign--on the facade of the Hard Rock Cafe at Beverly and La Cienega boulevards--is the brainchild of cafe owner Peter Morton, 44, who has made environmentalism a part of his entrepreneurial wisdom. A board member of the National Resources Defense Council, Morton hit upon the idea of the sign last summer and spent six months having it constructed to fit the well-known eatery--heretofore most conspicuous for the tail-finned ’59 Cadillac jutting from its roof.

“I just thought, ‘I have this corner in Los Angeles where thousands of people drive by every hour,’ ” said Morton, who activated the sign last Friday. “What a great way to make people aware.”

So there it sits--a veritable doomsday clock, tabulating ruination and overpopulation. Meanwhile, cars hurtle past, squealing and rumbling on asphalt nearly devoid of vegetation. Pedestrians move along the sidewalks, listening to stereo headphones, rushing toward sales at the nearby Beverly Center. Many are oblivious to the sign; others pause to squint at its inexorable display of numbers.

Will it possibly make any difference?

“We have similar problems in Montana,” observed James Conwell, 28, who was visiting this hub of materialism with his wife, Jennifer. He blamed strip-mining, logging--the usual culprits--and said no one seems able to stop them. “They’ve been doing deforestation in Montana for a number of years.”

Nel Coolen, 83, sounded skeptical that the sign will help at all as she prepared to cross the busy boulevard toward the Hollywood Hills, which loomed in a haze of unburned fossil fuel.

“I’ve never thought about it, so it’s kind of hard to say what I think,” Coolen said pointedly. “I’m getting too old to get involved in these things.”

Harold Horner, 54, stared at the display long enough for a dozen acres of Amazon jungle to vanish from the Earth. “Now I see . . . it’s going down,” he observed offhandedly. “I hear about the rain forest going down, but I sort of feel helpless about it.” He paused and sized up the sign more critically. “How could anyone driving by even see it?”

Indeed, the hubbub of Los Angeles steals a little of the sign’s ecological thunder. The sign--all pinpoint lights, wrapped across the curved side of the cafe--is difficult to read at a glance. One man in sweat shirt and headphones expressed concerns over traffic--fearing that someday, some would-be environmentalist will stare mesmerized at the display and get mowed down like one more bit of Amazon timber.

“I think if they don’t make it any clearer,” he said of the white digital display, “somebody’s going to get hit trying to figure out what the numbers mean.”

“You’re kind of smart not to read as you go along this street,” said Joyce Coyne of Los Angeles. But she allowed that the sign might--just might, mind you--do some good for the world. “I feel more positive than negative.”

The numbers, as Coyne spoke, had dropped to 1,996,360,465 acres of rain forest. World population, meanwhile, surged beyond 5,401,206,900.

Tom, 32, a West Hollywood rock music writer and singer who declined to give his last name, noticed the sign as he walked the boulevard in a black sequined fedora, chains and a black jacket lined in leopard skin--artificial leopard skin, of course. “What’s going on here with the rain forest?” he asked, staring through dark shades. A concern of his? You bet. “I’ve written music about it.”

But does he recycle? “Uh, I don’t, personally.”

Nonetheless, the telephonic response so far to the running tally has been extraordinary--thousands of telephone calls, according to Morton, who began using the phrase “Save the Planet” in the Hard Rock Cafe logo 15 years ago.

“A lot of people have already asked us, ‘What can we do?’ ” Morton said. “We’re saying, ‘The best thing you can do is to donate money to organizations that are working directly to preserve the rain forest.’ ”

The numbers, obtained from the Smithsonian Institution, are accurate, he added. “We’ve lost 268 acres since we’ve been talking.”

One by one, a few passersby seemed to be picking up that message--the urgency of the problem, the Earth in decline. Howard Hatmaker, 47, in town from Ohio for a convention of sheet-metal workers, stood with a friend on a concrete traffic island, staring intently at the cafe roof.

“We were really looking at the car,” Hatmaker admitted, until the sign was brought to his attention. Then he added: “If something doesn’t happen fast, we’re not going to have a world.” RELATED STORY, D2