 Less than five minutes after arriving at the Eden Project in Cornwall, I am tasting an experience that has all but disappeared from modern British life. I am sitting in an office passively inhaling tobacco smoke. "It's my room and my rules," says Tim Smit, co-founder of the environmental attraction, as he puffs on his cigar.  The Dutch-born entrepreneur attributes his success partly to his refusal to accept the rules and norms imposed by others. He is also contemptuous of what he feels is a typically British aversion to taking risks.  When raising the money to create the Eden Project and his previous triumph, the Lost Gardens of Heligan, he ignored the hundreds of people who told him it couldn't or shouldn't be done.  Next month is the tenth anniversary of the opening of the "global garden", which continues to attract more than a million visitors a year to a former china-clay pit near St austell.  Despite being knighted in January for his success in engaging the public with the science of sustainable living, Smit, 56, seems to prefer being the outsider who is free to attack the Establishment when he sees it paying lip service to green causes.  I ask him his opinion of David Cameron's claim that he will lead the "greenest government ever".  "That's about as valid as my claim to be Donald Duck," he says. "There are a lot of people in government who want to do the right thing but there is an enormous poverty of bravery and leadership. and I have met most of them. The problem is the profound fear of being disliked. Blair had it and Cameron seems to have it.  "They use paper-tiger language of boldness and decisiveness but make jolly sure they haven't offended people really. It's a very skilful use of acting."  The highlight of any visit to the project remains the Rainforest and Mediterranean biomes, the world's largest conservatories. Clambering up a terrifyingly thin, wobbly steel staircase to stand on a viewing platform just below the roof, 150ft above the forest floor, I can see that the rainforest has grown abundantly since I last visited five years ago. The lush, tropical trees now brush the roof in places and are trimmed by staff using a huge helium balloon.  Eden contains more than a million plants but avoids littering them with conventional plant labels, which Smit calls "tombstones". Instead, there are colourful illustrations telling the stories of the species on which we rely for our food, fuels, medicines and materials.  New sculptures are added each year to underline key messages. The entrance to the Mediterranean biome is guarded by the menacing WEEE man, made from 3.3 tonnes of washing machines, TVs, stereos and other waste electrical equipment, the amount that the average person discards in a lifetime.  after two hours of being intoxicated by Smit's eloquence, wit and cigar smoke, it is not difficult to understand how, over five painstaking years in the mid-Nineties, he managed to raise ?140 million and gather a world-class team of horticulturists, architects and engineers to create Eden.  More recently, Smit was one of 90 prominent figures who signed a letter this month attacking the Government's proposal to privatise public forests. Within three weeks the policy had been abandoned in a humiliating U-turn.  Yet Smit is not celebrating. He says that he signed the letter not because he opposed private ownership of forests, but because he feared that the new owners would lack the resources to protect and enhance them.  "a lot of people objected because they hate change. Yet the Forestry Commission was responsible for some of the most inappropriate planting the world has ever seen." Smit believes that what matters most is not who owns the forests but how they are managed, and whether dark rows of conifers are replaced with broadleaf trees at ancient woodland sites.  In his book Eden, Smit's account of how conversations in pubs in the mid-Nineties produced a "great green cathedral" with the world's largest conservatories, he argues that a sustainable world can be delivered only by harnessing the forces of private capital. He expresses sympathy for anti-capitalist protesters "who bring the unacceptable to public notice", but adds "to assume that multinationals are of themselves bad things is too simple.Their capital, infrastructure and webs of connection make them necessary partners in the new future."  Yet the book, which is being republished next month with more photographs and a new postscript, is scathing about the "City suitors" who considered lending money towards the creation of Eden but decided that the risks were too great.  They failed to blunt his ambition but he has clearly never forgiven them. Despite his outstanding track record, he still encounters short-sightedness among banks when he seeks support for new ideas.  "at public school I developed a loathing of privilege without merit. That's why I find it difficult to get on in the City, where there is a patrician arrogance that doesn't recognise Britain as a country but sees it as a playground.  "There is a lack of boldness in investment which really isn't that risky. Banks in this country have lost track of the reason they were set up. They realised they could make more money on currency trading than making money available for trade. If I was prime minister, I would make trading of your own currency at the expense of your nation a treasonable event."  Smith is furious that the Government has cut support for geothermal power, on which he is pinning his hopes of making Eden energy independent by the end of 2013. He says the ?25 million scheme, involving twin shafts that will tap the heat locked in granite three miles underground, will still go ahead, with drilling commencing in august. But Smit fears that the cuts will delay the wider development of a sustainable source that could supply 10 per cent of Britain's energy. His determination to make the geothermal project a success is fed partly by the failure of his previous plan to erect Britain's biggest onshore wind turbine at Eden.  In 2008 he said that wind was the only affordable way for the project to produce its own energy. But he dropped the plan a few weeks later after local protesters had blocked the three main entrances to Eden.  "For many of our neighbours the only asset they have is their house, and their perception was that, because of the turbine, the value was going to go down for our benefit. We built Eden on the principle of listening and being good neighbours so it would have been really damaging to us if we had gone against that."  Having suggested that geothermal was too expensive, Smit now says that it will not only meet all of Eden's needs but provide the energy for an eco-town being planned for the neighbouring disused china-clay pits.  Smit is on the board of Eco-bos, a company set up by an Egyptian billionaire to build 5,500 new homes. Eco-bos claims that the development will be "net zero-carbon" by 2025. Smit says that he understands the suspicion of those who fear the word "ecotown" is a green figleaf for new housing estates. He knows that Eden's brand could be tarnished by association if Eco-bos fails to fulfil its green promises.  "If it messes up it will be partly my fault," he says. He does not intend, however, to use the geothermal scheme to apply the carbon-neutral label to Eden.  "Carbon neutrality is a phrase that comes with a lot of baggage. It is a very difficult concept to honestly put on a plate." Organisations that make the claim may not be counting all their emissions. Eden may eventually produce all its own energy but it will remain dependent on the fossil fuel powering the cars of its visitors. Despite a ?4 discount for those who arrive on foot, bike or bus, almost 90 per cent of visitors come by car. Smit hates the way that the language of environmentalism has been hijacked by companies to sell their wares: "When all those words - eco this, green that - get taken by the marketing industry and ascribed to all sorts of things which then muddy the water, you have almost a dead language."  He says that the relentless focus on carbon emissions has obscured other factors in sustainable living. "The world isn't sustainable if you are carbon neutral. Energy is just one of the four pillars of sustainability.  The others are food, water and equity, and they are fantastically intertwined."  Smit believes that Eden's greatest contribution to the sustainability debate has been to supply a fifth pillar, which he describes as "emotional landscape".  He means that Eden finds ways of presenting themes and ideas that help people to see the underlying truth that they have been overlooking. "We all need stories to live by. If you haven't got a story that makes the people imbue it in their culture, you won't get the changes you need."  Eden is packed with these stories, including one that Smit says is particularly effective at making children understand the absurdity of our cultural obsession with owning things.  "You tell them to count up all the lawns in their village or town and then count up all the lawnmowers. They just giggle when they realise how stupid it is. We need a new language in which the sharing of things doesn't feel like a hippy or communist statement.  Communities could collectively own stuff and people pay a small licence to be part of it."  His family background has given him an unusual perspective on British life: his English grandparents were wealthy British industrialists who lived at Hartford Hall in Cheshire, while his Dutch grandparents were working class from a "two up, two down" in arnhem. Smit studied archaeology and anthropology at Durham University but became a music producer. Then, looking for a change, he moved to Cornwall in 1987, where he discovered and restored what he called the Lost Gardens of Heligan, botanical gardens established in the 18th century that had been abandoned after most of the gardeners died in the First World War.  Smit says that he feels "ashamed" about not sharing his own possessions as often as he could. He has a small boat moored at Fowey, the village where he still lives after separating from his wife. "It sits there winking on its mooring at me and I know there are hundreds of people who'd love to have a go."  Far from claiming to embody everything that he preaches, Smit spends part of our interview listing his shortcomings. He volunteers that his car is a petrol-driven BMW 3 series, not the greener diesel version.  asked about his a 