In his Sept 21 speech at the 2013 Beale Lecture on the Global Environment, "Imagining a sustainable future: foresight over hindsight," David Suzuki remarked that Prime Minister Tony Abbott's firing of climate scientist Tim Flannery and abolishment of the Climate Commission bear a resemblance to a crime against future generations.

As we all know, Mr Flannery was fired as head of the Climate Commission when Mr Abbott abolished the government-funded public commission.

"Your new Prime Minister ran on a promise to eliminate the carbon tax. I have no doubt he is going to do that, and will probably make this politically toxic now for at least a decade before it will be able to come back on the agenda. And this, of course, is just what corporations have wanted. But it works.

... in Canada a legal category where people can be sued and thrown in the slammer, called wilful blindness. If people in positions of power deliberately suppress or ignore information that is vital to the decisions they're making, that is wilful blindness. I call it more than wilful blindness. I call it criminal negligence because it's a crime against future generations, to avoid facing the reality.

That is what Mr Abbott is doing, by cancelling the (Climate) Commission, by firing Tim Flannery. It is criminal negligence through wil[l]ful blindness.

... As a Canadian, I beg Australians to think hard on what's happening in Canada, and please avoid that in your country," Mr Suzuki stated in his speech.

Watch David Suzuki's full speech here:

Meanwhile, on Sept 24 in Sydney, Mr Flannery launched a new independent Climate Council, The Associated Press and the Australian Associated Press report.

Mr Flannery stated that the new Climate Commission will be an "Obama-style" campaign to obtain funds from other sectors, independent of the government. He added that that the new council will still uphold the mandates that the Australian Labor Party established back in 2011.

"It will be a fiercely independent and apolitical body focused on providing the facts. Make no mistake, we're in the middle of a Titanic struggle, indeed I think that the fight for a clean and safe environmental future is reaching its peak. The resistance and the disinformation just keep growing. That's why we are here today. We are raising money Obama-style in small donations online from the public, from ordinary Australians. Although in my view they are extraordinary Australians. They are the ones who have stepped up and recognised the need and sacrificed just a bit to make sure the job gets done," Mr Flannery said.

The newly launched Climate Council received its first donation of $15 by Sept 24 and had reached about 1000 donations worth over $30,000.

"Over the last week we've really been blown away by offers of support and donations. Most people told us to keep going and they really appreciated our reports and information, in fact many of them found our work vital to what they do," Mr Flannery added.