DAVID Cameron has started a welcome conversation about green issues. Today, he will take it further by announcing his plans to encourage greener cars.

Labour, and Gordon Brown in particular, are trailing badly in his wake. It appears, though, that Mr Cameron's "radical agenda" to encourage people to own greener cars will involve tinkering with vehicle taxes.

But shouldn't we be encouraged not to take the car at all?

Last night, the National Rail Inquiries website said that to travel this morning from Darlington to London on the East Coast Main Line would cost £127 (which fell to £86 if you left after 9am and so arrived after half the day was over). If there were two or more of you suddenly wanting to attend a hastily-arranged family funeral or a last-minute business meeting, you would be saving a worthwhile fortune if you took the car.

This is the real problem with green solutions. They aren't going to be painless. Someone has to pay.

Mr Cameron's initiatives are timed for the local elections next month. "Go green, vote blue" is his slogan.

Because we are filling up our landfill sites so quickly, the Government is encouraging local councils to build incinerators - several councils in the North-East are examining where they will locate such controversial things.

However, don't we really need a more sophisticated rubbish collection service? Most councils take away newspapers separately, several do glass and aluminium, but very few do plastic, cardboard, tin... Such a selective service, though, would be expensive to set up and costly to run. The slogan would then be: "Go green, vote blue, be bled red by your council tax demands".

That doesn't sound like a vote winner. So it isn't going to happen. It's cheaper to continue landfilling or burning.

And no Government is going to tackle the fact that on a list of green priorities, stopping people flying on holiday is higher than encouraging them to have more fuel-efficient cars.

"Go green, stay white; avoid yellow sun, blue seas and a deep, dark tan" will not attract many votes from the millions of us that will jet off to the Mediterranean this summer.

Mr Cameron's green thinking is welcome, but is any politician brave enough to tackle us all head-on and hit us where it hurts?