Zac Goldsmith was chatting to the chief buyer for a supermarket chain recently. He was happy to learn that customers preferred English apples to those flown halfway across the world. What a marvellous saving in aviation fuel this trend could provoke, he suggested. The buyer shook his head. What Goldsmith didn't understand was that, before the apples arrive on our supermarket shelves, they are flown to South Africa to be waxed.
"Globalisation has changed the way we live massively and not in good ways," says Goldsmith. Since the World Bank was established in 1944, he says, there has been a 12-fold increase in global trade and a five-fold increase in economic growth. "Life expectancy is falling. Three billion people live on less than two dollars a day. Agricultural land is shrinking. Globalisation is responsible for all these things." According to the UN, he says, drought, deforestation, industrial agriculture and climatic volatility are responsible for the loss of 250m acres of fertile soil each year, undermining the food security of 1.2 billion people worldwide.
We are having lunch in a pizzeria in Chelsea farmers' market, a venue Goldsmith chose because most of its ingredients are supplied by an adjacent organic supermarket. "Anything that can be produced in Britain is sold there in preference to foreign goods," he says. The restaurant and shop are owned by a Persian man, who also owns a tobacco shop and a nightclub. Goldsmith, 30, the son of the late corporate raider and Referendum party founder Sir James, is a shareholder in this incoherent portfolio. "It's not really a business thing," he says, lighting a roll-up. Rather, he sees this kind of food as the future. "I get really excited about organic. People love it."
Why, you might ask, should we listen to the anti-globalisation opinions of an old Etonian, poker-playing plutocrat who runs a play farm funded from daddy's inheritance in Devon with his wife Sheherazade, the daughter of the socialite Viviane Ventura, edits a magazine called the Ecologist, founded by his uncle Teddy, and has not unreasonable expectations of becoming a Tory MP.
Goldsmith is more interesting than such a biography suggests. True, he typifies the triumph of the toffs. But he also exemplifies how some conservationists are at heart conservatives."I consider myself and have always considered myself a conservative as opposed to a radical," he says. "I believe in the precautionary principle [the idea that if the consequences of an action are unknown, but are judged to have some potential for major negative consequences, then it is better to avoid that action]. I don't think in terms of left or right politics."
Instead, he brings a venture capitalist's mindset to the question of how to put a green agenda at the heart of British politics. In a leader in the Ecologist before this year's general election, he wrote: "Which of the main parties has an answer to climate change, antibiotic-resistant superbugs, the rural crisis, collapsing fish stocks?" A vote for the Labour party was a vote for the status quo, he said, while the Lib Dems were "an authoritarian party with a big-government, legislative answer to every problem". Which left the Tories, who, Goldsmith contended, had made useful suggestions, such as referendums on local planning issues.
The piece had a personal resonance. "For the last couple of years," he says, "I have been thinking a lot about getting involved in politics." Why not the Green party? "It's not really a serious party. I don't understand them - all this stuff about revolving leaders, some of whom are very talented and others who aren't." Temperamentally, too, this bon viveur is insufficiently ascetic for the Greens. "I hate that kind of green politics that suggests people ought to live like monks. There is a problem with the green movement berating people it needs to have on side. If you live in a system of rampant consumerism, it's pointless to be continually blamed when you can't really do otherwise."
So, instead of going Green, Goldsmith is turning blue. It is a family tradition: his grandfather Frank, who arrived in Britain from Paris with his parents in 1894, became a Tory MP and friend of the young Winston Churchill. He says Sir James would have approved. "He was a very well-organised man," says Goldsmith. "He had a daughter every 10 years." One of them was Jemima, Goldsmith's equally glamorous sister.
You can see why the Tories would want Goldsmith, if not on their front bench then at least wherever a TV camera is rolling. He's young, articulate and the best-looking Tory I've interviewed. And he has an estimated £300m fortune. Why, then, would he want to be associated with a bunch of Tory losers? "I think the party is lost at the moment. The good thing about the Conservatives is that they're thrashing around for an identity and that presents an opportunity for change." Would he like to be shadow environment secretary? "In terms of my own personal ambitions, I don't have any."
So, is he for Davis or Cameron? After all, Davis is - like Goldsmith - on the board of trustees of the Eurosceptic European Foundation. "I've met Davis several times. I don't know Cameron. Even if his views are opposed to mine, I think he is more electable." Surely he isn't interested in Goldsmith's off-message agenda? "Rory Bremner described him as a political iPod on which you could play anything. I hope that is true. I hope I will be able to infect him with environmentalism." He looks glum for a second. "It may be a complete waste of time."
Indeed, Goldsmith is probably more inspired by Ralph Nader than Cameron might like. He is hostile to big government and transnational corporate interests, and friendly towards local free-market systems favoured by rightwing American outfits such as the Cato Institute. It's a philosophy that led him to fund groups taking on GM crops, industrial agriculture and nuclear power, to tilt at the EU and to eulogise Switzerland, where true democracy, he argues, was shown to work last weekend when an anti-GM referendum was passed.
Consider his energy policy. "I believe in decentralising the grid. That way we won't have huge blackouts across Europe." Instead of favouring nuclear power, he is inspired by the renewable energy initiatives of some West Country hamlets. "They have become totally sovereign in terms of energy, running local biomass power plants," he says. But what about big cities? "You could have mini-power stations operating with biomass supplying each street. Not each house - that's fanciful. Depending on which model you use, you can expect all capital costs for such energy to be done in three years. You would have thought the government would be able to deal with banks for capital costs to be shouldered for an energy policy on those lines."
Why can't nuclear energy have a role in Goldsmith's decentralised grid? "It's the precautionary principle again. Blair is taking a huge gamble. The incidence of cancer at Sellafield is 11 times the national average. Security is also an issue: when Greenpeace broke into Sizewell B two years ago it exposed a huge security risk," he says.
The government has also dealt ineptly with energy conservation, he says. "If as much human energy had been put into that as had been put into the Iraq war, there wouldn't be such a panic about the need for nuclear power. We should be pursuing an aggressive policy of energy conservation. I use the example of energy-saving lightbulbs. People wouldn't notice a difference in their lifestyles, but the savings would be immense."
He is despairing of British agriculture. "Our intensive, industrial farms will continue to produce food for as long as they can out-compete increasingly desperate developing countries, but that won't be possible for long. Soon we will stop producing food altogether unless we change our farming policy." Does that matter? "The world is becoming less secure and, as a result, food security is even more important than energy security. It is essential we have a strong, non-intensive agriculture," he says.
When he leaves, I ask for the bill, but he has already quietly settled it. Such noblesse. Such breeding. So I visit the very good organic shop. Apples? To my eye, properly unwaxed. I buy a prepared salad of rocket, corn, radicchio and grated carrot. But it comes from Italy. Perhaps British farming is in a more parlous state than even Goldsmith imagines.
On the shelves at Zac Goldsmith's organic store, Here, in Chelsea
An organic wheat-free bread with caraway seeds from the Terence Stamp Collection (devised because the actor suffered from IBS and wheat allergies), £1.49
Carob drops, a dairy-free and soya-free alternative to chocolate buttons, £2.89. Lovely grilled on non-wheat organic bread. Also available: carob dog drops
Peter Rabbit orange and raisin organic cookies by Buxton. Vegetarian, soya-free and GM-free, with no added salt or sugar, £1.95 for 125g
Hemp-sprouted organic bread, made from an ancient recipe rich in Omega-3 oils, £1.89
Pulse Bioshield, a device for mobile phone users to neutralise the harmful side-effects (including headaches, deafness, memory loss, confusion etc) of so-called electromagnetic smog produced by mobile phones, £10.99