Sacked government scientist Tim Flannery forms the private Australian Climate Council
Flannery says new Climate Council will 'fiercely guard' its independence
*** We're not taking any money that has any strings attached to it. Professor Tim Flannery
Tue 24 Sep 2013, 5:48pm AEST
Scientist Tim Flannery has officially launched a new climate science organisation, the Climate Council, declaring it will "fiercely guard" its independence.
The council has been formed in the wake of the Government's decision last week to axe the taxpayer-funded Climate Commission.
The commission was set up in February 2011 under then prime minister Julia Gillard as an independent body "to provide reliable and authoritative" information on climate change.
Professor Flannery says the commissioners will continue their work through the new community-funded Climate Council.
"We are raising money Obama-style in small donations online from the public, from ordinary Australians - although in my view they are extraordinary Australians," he said.
The council began accepting donations at midnight and by Tuesday afternoon 7,200 people had donated $218,000.
The commission had a $5.4 million budget over four years and, while Professor Flannery says the new council can be leaner, he added it will still need a substantial budget.
But he says donors will not have any influence on the council's work.
"Our role is to communicate the facts of climate change to the Australian public," he said.
"We won't be running any political campaigns, we won't be running any agendas.
"There's one thing that I'm adamant about, and the rest of the commissioners are, that we're not taking any money that has any strings attached to it.
"We will fiercely guard our independence."
Council to respond promptly to IPCC report One of the new council's first tasks will be to respond to the next report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), due to be released early next week.
Climate change scientist Professor Will Steffen, who sat on the Climate Commission and will now join Professor Flannery at the rebranded Climate Council, says it has a crucial role in explaining the IPCC findings to Australians.
"We will issue a short companion report summarising the main findings of the IPCC report and hopefully cutting through some of the technical difficulties that are inherent in the IPCC report," he said.
"We will try to pick up the big ticket items, the big messages coming out of the report and make it accessible to people around the country."
Professor Flannery says the "business-as-usual" approach to climate change fills him with "horror".
"Make no mistake, we're in the middle of a titanic struggle," he said.
"Indeed, I think that the fight for a clean and safe environmental future is reaching its peak."
Environment Minister Greg Hunt told Lateline that public support for the Climate Council proves the body did not have to be paid for by the Government.
"That's the great thing about democracy - it's a free country and it proves our point that the commission didn't have to be a taxpayer-funded body," he said.
But former climate commissioner and former BP president Gerry Hueston told The World Today the Coalition's decision to scrap the Climate Commission was about eradicating Labor's climate initiatives.
However, Mr Hueston said he does not believe the Coalition has an agenda against Mr Flannery.
"Tim Flannery became Australian of the Year under a Liberal Government. I'm not aware of any conservative agenda to get rid of Tim Flannery," he said.
"I just think it was part of a wider action which was to move out of the way all of the legacy from the Labor government when it came to anything that had climate change or carbon written in front of it.
"I think we were providing a good value for money service. It's entirely the Government's prerogative to decide that they can do it in another way or not do it at all. And that's the reality of the political process."
