Coal baron and LNP donor blasts RBA for sounding alarm on climate change

The coal baron and Liberal National party donor Trevor St Baker has blasted the Reserve Bank deputy governor, Guy Debelle, for sounding the alarm on climate change, branding a significant speech on Tuesday warning of risks to Australia’s financial stability “totally inappropriate”.

 ERM Power founder Trevor St Baker (right)
has suggested the RBA deputy governor
Guy Debelle lacks technical understanding
 of how the electricity market works. 

The politically connected founder of the business electricity retailer ERM Power, who has approached the Morrison government to underwrite new coal developments in Victoria and New South Wales, including a high-efficiency plant on the site of the AGL-owned Liddell power station, told the ABC on Wednesday Debelle’s intervention was out of order.

The RBA deputy governor on Tuesday noted businesses and policymakers needed to consider climate change as a trend and not a cyclical event, and said climate change-induced shocks to the economy would be “close to permanent” if droughts were more frequent and cyclones happened more often.

Read the story from The Guardian by Katharine Murphy - “Coal baron and LNP donor blasts RBA for sounding alarm on climate change.”

(Trevor St Baker is obviously ideologically deaf and blind as all the news I can see and hear, along with the irrefutable science, illustrates that climate change is going to make life startlingly difficult with the prime cause of that being our flagrant use of fossil fuels, mainly coal. Beyond that, Mr St Baker needs to be aware that there is no such thing as a “high-efficiency” coal plant - Robert McLean)