It appears that prime ministerial wannabe David "call me Dave" Cameron has finally realised what the rest of us and Kermit the Frog have known for a long time – it really isn't easy being green.

This was hammered home recently when it was revealed that while Dave was highlighting his eco-friendly credentials by cycling to work, his chauffeur was driving along behind with his briefcase and a change of clothes.

Luckily for Dave this embarrassing revelation emerged in the same week that Charles Clarke was losing foreign prisoners, Patricia Hewitt was losing the respect of nurses and John Prescott was losing his trousers. A happy coincidence that left Dave free to avoid too many questions about his craven hypocrisy and quietly flag down the next bandwagon in peace.

But for the rest of us the Tory leader's bike-related antics typify just how difficult it is to behave in an environmentally friendly way.

I don't doubt many of us would happily do our bit to save the planet and cycle to work, if it didn't mean leaving our laptop at home and ending up with a reputation at work for being kind to trees, but rather smelly. But it does, so we continue with our planet-choking commute.

It is against this backdrop of impending ecological disaster that innovations in collaboration and communication technologies capable of reducing the number of journeys we take by plane, train and automobile have been recently heralded as some kind of pollution-busting silver bullet.

Cisco's chief, John Chambers, became the latest to dangle before us the prospect of reduced corporate travel last month, claiming that the next generation of high-definition video conferences would convey nuances and facial gestures that would make them as effective as face-to-face meetings.

Now this technology is very welcome and there is little doubt that growing numbers of firms, increasingly mindful of their environmental responsibilities as well as their astronomical travel costs, will use these tools to enable more home working and reduce the number of flights their executives take.

But, as David Cameron and his bike have proved, even if the technology is there to reduce carbon emissions people will only embrace it if they can do so without compromising other areas of their life and business, and in this respect it is doubtful if collaboration technologies can ever deliver the large-scale environmental benefits that some hope.

IT directors may soon be able to install high-definition video technology that will make corporate travel theoretically unnecessary, but is anyone really going to use it to close multi-million-dollar deals, carry out strategy meetings, hire and fire people, or carry out the myriad of business interactions that we still firmly believe require face-to-face contact?

A massive change in business culture is required to really tackle the environmental problems arising from corporate travel. But even the IT vendors that produce these communication tools are concerned that while they are talking to clients over the ether their rivals are flying out to meet them in person, so I fear that no company will ever be willing to take the steps required to really champion this change in attitudes.