Green politics has become, over the years, my one true faith. You just have to look at a disposable nappy to know that it’s the Devil’s work. The unbiodegradable outer casing, the sinister bead things inside which swell to absorb the pee, the sickly scented plastic nappy bag you shove it in, along with yards of chemical-coated wipes. And 2.8 billion of them leaving young British bottoms every year for a hole in the ground. It has to be wrong. If I had another baby I’d have that pan bubbling on the stove . . . Well, possibly.

Perhaps it stems from my latent Northern thrift, but recently my Green religion has assumed an evangelical fervour. Just as in my student radical days I couldn’t countenance having a Conservative friend — now I have several, though pretty wet ones — today I could not feel affection for someone who drives a 4X4 in London. I’m not even sure I could love someone who lobs their glass bottles in the bin or drives their child a walkable distance to school. Sinners all!

Boy, it’s hard being one of the Jeremiahs. What funsuckers we are, nagging you not to leave your TV on standby so — sigh — you have to cross the room to turn it on, warning that your fab £1.99 easyJet flights have an environmental cost, being appalled that every six months you up-grade your mobile phone. As the recent election showed, politicians keep silent about global warming: who wants to nag the voters that they must learn to consume less?

Yet I fear my own green observance is far from exemplary. But then how far does a true believer go? Is it enough to recycle the plastic bottles that fresh soup comes in. (Shouldn’t I be making my own?) And does rinsing out jam jars in the dishwasher negate the environmental benefits of the bottle bank? And honestly, I switch the dishwasher on only when it’s crammed to bursting. I try to please my green god by rarely driving, well, only when I’m late or bearing a particularly whingey child. I pull my old-lady shopping trolley to the supermarket: the indulgences I earn by saving the planet from five new plastic bags. I’d compost my vegetable peelings if it didn’t look such a faff.

I feel shamed by my friend R, an Old Testament prophet of green, who at the supermarket removes raspberries from their plastic punnets, meat from its Styrofoam casing, puts the produce in her basket and presents all the CFC-soaked packaging to the store manager. Unlike her I doubt I will see green heaven. But I have been already been to green hell.

Driving through America earlier this year — in the biggest SUV we could hire to punish the US for not signing the Kyoto Accord — I wondered why I bother to recycle my bean cans when waste there is on such an egregious scale. Even in quite upscale motels, breakfast was served with disposable plates and cutlery, so at the end of service the waitress just binned three huge bags of plastic and polystyrene. Screw the planet: it’s cheaper than paying someone to wash up.

But America’s attitude to the environment is best demonstated by how it does its laundry. Years ago, passing through an Amish town, I was puzzled to find postcards showing washing pegged on a line. It took me some time to work out why this was considered so quaint and folksy as to be worth a picture. Because even in California clothes are rarely hung in the sun to dry: it’s quicker to put them in an industrial-size drier, which not only gulps down electricity but wears out the fabric so that very soon you must buy more clothes. Keep that economy rolling whatever the price, a policy that stinks worse than the dirtiest nappy.

We should be so lucky

Around the mid-1980s, at the height of Neighbours-fever, my father, who had read the Daily Mirror for 40 years, said in exasperation: “If Kylie Minogue is on the front page of that newspaper again tomorrow, I’ll never buy it again.” She was and he didn’t.

I recalled his emphatic decision on Tuesday morning, when Kylie’s breast cancer diagnosis was the second item on Radio Four’s news. Then the Today programme cut to a journalist reporting this world-shattering matter from outside Ms Minogue’s Melbourne home.

The coverage of Kylie’s misfortune has astonished me. Every serious newspaper — including this one — has given it acres of pages, all expressing disbelief that cancer could happen to our perfect poppet Kylie, as if she were not a woman of human flesh, but a creature fashioned from tinsel, baby’s laughter and stardust. Who doesn’t wish her well? But I loathe the insulting implication that I can understand the issue of breast cancer only if it is sugar-coated in celebrity gossip. But now, unlike my father 20 years ago, I have nowhere left to turn.

janice.turner@thetimes.co.uk

Times Recommends

• And lo, he ventured forth . . .
• Lying to your children isn't a crime
• A single way to improve IVF treatment