This morning brought some rather amusing news on the ABC.

The newsreader piously intoned the Good News that Sydney City Council was continuing its commitment to carbon neutrality by recycling discarded Christmas trees in the council area. A spokesperson stated with all the excitement of shepherds who had just had a visit from angels, that rather than letting discarded Christmas trees go to landfill with the general garbage, they would collect the discarded trees in special collections throughout January.

OK so let's think this through. The council area with one of the highest concentrations of Greens voters in the nation has to start a collection of discarded Christmas trees.

That means that the area with one of the highest concentrations of Greens voters in the nation also has one of the highest concentrations of users of natural chopped down Christmas trees in the nation.

The people who decry the destruction of forests which we desperately need to prevent climate change are happy enough to chop down trees when it suits them.

And the people who live furthest from the forests where these trees come from, and who regularly berate governments for unnecessary use of evil polluting fossil fuels are happy to have trucks delivering these things 100 km into the middle of the city for a week or so of decorations.

Apparently neither the individuals who buy the trees nor the Council staff see the incongruity of then using more fossil fuels spewing "carbon pollution" into the the air to collect and recycle the trees.

But they do see the opportunity to grab headlines to push their green virtue by recycling waste.

Has anyone done a cost-benefit analysis to see whether the environment is hurt or improved by this programme? I bet not.

Meanwhile we red-necks out in the country who go around not caring about the environment, wantonly get out our ten or twenty year old plastic Christmas trees and recycle our decorations year after year. Or, as we have done many years, use a living Christmas tree in a pot which also lasts several years- we have one now in the garden which must be about 15 years old happily reducing our carbon footprint year on year.

Once again the high priests of the Green religion show the much-observed fact that it is a religion about seeming to care rather than doing anything.

Some might think that could be called hypocrisy. I just think it's post-modern thoughtlessness.

It's only troglodytes like me that think that your beliefs should form a basis for your whole life and that words should be matched by actions.