The conservative government of Australia’s new Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who notably said, “the climate change argument is absolute crap,” announced on Thursday it abolished the national climate watchdog.

Abbott was sworn in just Wednesday, and took no time in axing the Climate Commission, a body established in 2011 by then-Prime Minister Julia Gillard “to inform Australia’s approach to addressing climate change and help build the consensus required to move to a competitive, low pollution Australian economy.”

Agence France-Presse reports that

Outgoing Chief Commissioner Professor Tim Flannery warned that other bodies would not be able to fill the gap, saying, “The Bureau of Meteorology,” for example, “puts out advice and information on weather events, but doesn’t cover the economics or international action happening around climate change.”

“There’s various other groups that may or may not be able to do some of it, but having an independent strong authority that’s committed to just telling the facts as they are …we’re the group that was doing that,” he said.

“Future generations will look back on this day and remember it as the day Tony Abbott condemned them and their peers to climate chaos.”“It’s increasingly difficult for those groups to fill the role, partly because of the depth of capacity,” he said. “Many of these organizations are also constrained politically to some extent or another.”