The Climate Council's senior researcher, Tim Baxter says Australia has the potential to be a powerhouse when it comes to renewables ... and the time is now.
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While global emissions have dropped as a result of COVID-19, Mr Baxter emphasised that historically emissions "routinely drop during a crisis".
"The way emissions work is that they don't stop growing until you stop emitting, so we might be adding a tiny bit less this year but we are still adding to the burden of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere," Mr Baxter said.
"Coronavirus has slowed emissions growth but it hasn't stopped the overall increase in the concentrations, which is what matters."
In fact, Mr Baxter warned that often what you saw post-disaster was a "rebound in emissions".
"After a crisis, emissions bounce straight back up to where they would have been beforehand, which means emissions accelerate afterwards."
"We are currently writing the future of whether that is going to happen."
Coronavirus has resulted in a blip in emissions and has had a huge economic impact.
Australia, Mr Baxter says, has a choice as to how it moves forward.
"We now have a choice of what we do when we reboot our economy and we can re-own it toward net-zero emissions.
"We can step up as a renewables-led powerhouse and we can do everything that we need to bring our emissions down to net zero - which is where they need to be.
"It will be a transition, it will take time but we don't have a lot of time ... we need to do this as soon as possible.
"Things don't stop getting worse in terms of climate change impact until globally a point of net-zero emissions is reached."
Mr Baxter describes the slight reduction as "a temporary blip"
"By itself it doesn't mean anything but we can make it mean something, we can make this be the point that global emissions peak and start coming down because we get to choose what we do when we are rebooting our economy throughout the world.
"You have to replace all uses of fossil fuels - coal, oil and gas ... you don't get to net-zero if you're still burning fossil fuels - not possible.
"You power everything with renewables - Australia is the sunniest continent on the planet and windiest inhabited on the planet.
"Renewables backed by storage is the cheapest form of new generation in Australia now."
He said that Australia also had to step up into its role as an exporter of zero-emissions technology, expertise and energy.
"This allows other countries in our region that aren't the sunniest continent on the planet and the windiest inhabited continent on the planet to reduce their emissions and obviously has economic benefits for Australia.
"And you take a bunch of action on the land and in our coastal regions to promote resilience because global temperatures are going to get hotter before they'll get held in place.
"In the past 12 months in Australia, we have seen unprecedented flood, black summer bushfires, the Great Barrier Reef had its third mass bleaching in five years ... this is all stuff that is going to get worse in the short-term. We have a choice about how much worse we let it get."
Mr Baxter said action had "to start today."
"We need a recovery that is job-intensive and we also, as a country that is acutely vulnerable to climate change, need a recovery based on getting to net-zero emissions as soon as we can ...
"We have choices as to how we restart."
