
Woodside vs the Planet
How a Company Captured a Country; Quarterly Essay 99
Marian Wilkinson(Author)
Quarterly Essay (Publisher)
Published on 1. September 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
144 pages
978-1-76064-501-4 (ISBN)
Description
Why is Australia doubling down on fossil fuels?
The world may have committed at Paris to hold back dangerous climate change, but Australia's fossil-fuel giant Woodside is doubling down: it has bold new plans to keep producing gas out to 2070. Support from the major parties is locked in, so something has to give.
This is a story of power and influence, pollution and protest. How does one company capture a country? How convincing is Woodside's argument that gas is a necessary transition fuel, as the world decarbonises? And what is the new "energy realism" narrative being pushed by Trump's White House?
In this engrossing essay, Marian Wilkinson reveals the ways of corporate power and investigates the new face of resistance and disruption. The stakes could not be higher.
"The gas companies and the Labor governments in WA and Canberra had refined their defence: the gas industry was helping the world decarbonise, curbing its emissions and providing energy security. It sounded like the planet could hardly have a better friend than Australia's LNG industry and companies like Woodside." -Marian Wilkinson, Woodside vs the Planet
This issue contains correspondence relating to Hard New World by Hugh White from Lachlan Harris, Emma Shortis, Ali Wyne, James Curran, Susannah Patton, Mark Edele, Brendan Taylor, Clive Edwards, and Hugh White.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Australia
Publishing group
Black Inc.
Product notice
Paperback (UK-trade)
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 167 mm
Thickness: 10 mm
Weight
336 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-76064-501-4 (9781760645014)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Marian Wilkinson is a multi-award-winning investigative journalist and a reporter at ABC TV's Four Corners. She has been a foreign correspondent and deputy editor for The Sydney Morning Herald and an executive producer of Four Corners. Her books include The Fixer, Dark Victory (with David Marr) and The Carbon Club.