"You can be as angry as you like with environmentalists and 'environmentalism' but from an economic point of view it still wouldn't make sense to be so heavily addicted to this polluting business as Australia is."

"The Abbott government [which has attacked wind power and reduced support for small-scale solar] is clearly not leading Australia in the direction that's needed", he argues.

The speed of the renewables revolution is "staggering", he says, and it would be "economically reckless" for Australia to remain largely coal-reliant.

But he argues in an opinion piece in The Sydney Morning Herald that even those who don't accept the science should grasp what he describes as the overwhelming economic case for moving away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy.

The 47-year old was at the pinnacle of the banking world until he stepped down last year as the NAB's managing director and group CEO. NAB under his stewardship supported the Gillard government's carbon pollution reduction scheme in 2011 but Mr Clyne insists he is "business-aligned" rather than Labor-aligned.

He said business leaders "overwhelmingly" share his conviction that Australia should move to a market-based carbon trading scheme but fear speaking out because they feel "this particular government is pretty hostile to criticism ... they feel the distraction of getting up the government's nose is simply not worth it, and becomes a huge distraction from them running their business. A lot of them are lamenting the lack of clarity on energy policy," he said.

"They feel there is an enormous amount of investment [in renewables] that's not flowing to Australia because of the lack of certainty around energy policy." Business wanted a "sensible approach to energy policy that both sides can endorse and take it out of the political equation."

Asked about the views of Maurice Newman, head of the Prime Minister's business advisory council who recently characterised climate action as a UN-led conspiracy, Mr Clyne said he had not encountered such thinking elsewhere in the Australian business community. Mr Clyne said he supported peer-reviewed science. "I don't understand how lung cancer works, but I don't smoke because peer-reviewed science says it's bad".

The Abbott government has signalled that it will oppose Labor's proposal to take a carbon-emissions trading scheme to the next election.