Lovins doesn't seem to be bothered or apologetic about his tardiness. After getting up to turn off an unused projector, he leans back in his chair and listens as Mike Bertolucci, president of Interface, a billion-dollar-a-year carpet company, offers an example of what Lovins was supposed to lecture about. He shows the crowd, with facts, figures and flowcharts, how Lovins' theory of "natural capitalism" works. By cutting back on the production of waste, says Bertolucci, Interface does better business. The result: Both the environment and the bottom line benefit.

After Bertolucci is finished, it's too late for Lovins to lecture but he does have time for a few questions. One audience member presses an obvious point -- given that most companies see controlling pollution as a cost, not a benefit, how does he persuade corporations to go along?

"Well," Lovins says, leaning forward, "our basic model is to urge the early adopters. We target high-profile companies in specific markets, companies that have a cultural willingness to change. But I would really love to see investors and financial analysts get involved. I'd like to see them put pressure on companies that aren't environmentally efficient."

Inspiring corporate reform is bread and butter for Lovins. He has spent most of the past 25 years teaching companies, International Monetary Fund bankers and even presidents the lessons of natural capitalism. Since 1982, his nonprofit consultancy, Rocky Mountain Institute, has offered expertise on everything from energy efficiency to the savings incurred through toilet technology improvements.

The central concept of natural capitalism -- the notion that companies that eliminate waste and become more environmentally efficient will prosper while their dirty competitors fail -- hasn't always won Lovins praise. The left has denounced him for being too optimistic, for assuming that capitalists can control their greed long enough to understand the value of cleaning up after themselves. The right, on the other hand, has argued that Lovins' focus on conservation and efficiency fails to acknowledge that resources are not nearly as scarce as most environmentalists claim.

Despite the critiques, Lovins, who can be characterized as both pro-business and pro-environment, enjoys good relations with all sides of the political spectrum. And in the current political climate -- in which the environment is moving to the center of heated debate in a fashion not seen since the 1970s -- Lovins and his profit-based call for change are ascending to higher prominence than ever before. With President Bush backpedaling on his promise to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, refusing to order cuts in the allowable concentration of arsenic in our drinking water and eager to let oil companies drill in Alaska, many environmentalists act as though Armageddon is just around the corner. Lovins, as one of the few conservationists with entree to corporate boardrooms, has become one of the movement's primary vessels of hope -- the rare messenger who won't be turned away at the door.

Yet the focus of all this attention says he wants little to do with politics. Lovins eschews the left's fevered anti-Bush paranoia. He is adamant in defense of Rocky Mountain's deliberately apolitical stance, and shrugs off concerns that the earth will long have been ruined before his theories are ever widely adopted. Lovins is hopeful for the future. As far as he's concerned, the corporate shift toward natural capitalism is inevitable; government could do more to encourage the trend and activism shouldn't be discarded, but in the long run, going green is cheaper and companies will do it for their own good. The next Industrial Revolution, characterized by dramatic transformations in resource management, is already happening and will continue to spread, he says. Not even Bush can stop it.

"It feels somewhat like the early days of civil rights," Lovins says. "The changes are here, now, and on the way."

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