In Conversation with Ayisha Siddiqa

The Polluters Out Co-Founder on Exclusion at COP26, Rebelling with Poetry, and Why The Fossil Fuel Industry Must Be Abolished

It’s currently Saturday, November 13, at about 8 p.m. EST — about a week since 22-year-old Ayisha Siddiqa left the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, otherwise known as the Conference of the Parties (COP26). 

“It doesn’t feel like it, though,” she says, noting her inability to process what has happened. Siddiqa had come home to Coney Island from Glasgow that Sunday and immediately after, had to go on a work retreat in upstate New York. With her was the same bag she took to Glasgow, a place still very much on her mind because members of Polluters Out — the international youth-led coalition she co-founded dedicated to abolishing the fossil fuel industry — are still there.

This is an interesting time for the climate movement, which Siddiqa describes as one dependent on patterns and moments that must be captured when the public cares. “It’s when there’s a natural disaster, a major strike, or an event like the Conference of the Parties, that the public [pays attention]. But [for the] rest of the 365 days, it’s a slow, tedious process; so I genuinely want to get my voice out as much as I can.”

It has been expressed by many leading voices within the climate movement that COP26 — what Siddiqa compares to a literal border wall — was a manifestation of numerous organizational failures and rampant systemic injustices:

“If one wants to know why we are in this mess that we call the climate crisis, come to COP26. Everyone who was responsible was there. And that is the irony of it all.”

For one, many members of the Global South could not even obtain the visas, plane tickets, or hotel room expenses necessary in order to attend the conference. At the conference itself, Siddiqa paints a grim picture of gates surrounding the center, handicap-inaccessible revolving doors, and a lack of transportation that induced incredibly long wait times.

“[There was a] person in a wheelchair who was attending COP, and she had to be in line outside for two hours just for them to help her get in. And temperatures are freezing. Like, this is really bad weather. And she — Daphne Frias — had to wait outside for two hours just to get inside the f-ing COP building.”

The comparison Siddiqa draws to a border wall is fitting, for the laws of the UN, the right to assembly, the right to freedom of speech, and protocols are completely different. In order to enter the conference center, participants needed United Nations validation and Siddiqa notes that security checkpoints were even more strict than the TSA.

She describes the inside in even more dystopian imagery:

“Per capitalism — every major wall was plastered with advertisements. Plastered. In the main rooms, there was a screen running with all of the prominent funders of the event. In the center was a huge globe, and behind it was Microsoft, Nestlé, Unilever, Google — like, are you seeing what I’m seeing? Why the hell are they everywhere? And people are just immune: I’m in a panel and I’m like, “Do you guys know who funded this event?” and one person in the panel said, “Shouldn’t you extend your hand and not try to fight with them?” and I was like, “Dude, do you realize that they’ve made edits in the Paris Climate Agreement?”

Siddiqa is referring to the fact that 1.5℃ of warming initially set by the Paris Climate Agreement is no longer the precedent because the United Nations is allowing countries — specifically the G7 countries — to relax their carbon reduction agreements, which would push the world towards an alarming 2.4℃ of warming. This is mainly because of the fossil fuel industry, Siddiqa asserts, noting that the word “fossil fuel” is not once in the language of the Paris Climate Agreement. 

These failures on the parts of governments can undoubtedly be attributed to collusion with this industry. In plain view at COP26 were hand sanitizing stations that read the company name “Dettol.” Even the pavilions of each nation state, where tables showcased countries’ climate initiatives, were paired with advertisements from companies causing the climate crisis. This was all encapsulated in blatant elitism:

“President Biden came in with an entourage of cars and they blocked off a huge part of the entrance. This is on top of the blockage that already existed. He rented out an entire hotel in Edinburgh — people couldn’t stay there anymore — and he came and he fell asleep. When the World Leaders Summit started, when it previously took us 20 minutes to walk, it now became a good 40 minute walk to just get the hell out of the area because they blocked entrances. That was the elitism of it, on top of the fact that [503] fossil fuel and corporate delegates, lobbyists, and executives attended COP26. It felt like a shitshow, honestly.”

It seems that fossil fuel companies have found a safe haven in the warm, welcoming arms of Western, white, and colonialist elitism. Such a symbiotic relationship was perfectly — yet disturbingly — exemplified during COP26’s BBC debate night, in which OGUK chief executive Deirdre Michie co-opted the term “Indigenous” in order to justify the creation of new oil projects, stating that as someone “Indigenous” to Scotland, such is her right. Siddiqa, one of the debate’s attendees countered Michie’s claim, in reference to her Pakistani background:

“My people have been blown up for oil. Their limbs have been severed and there’s been heads detached from bodies for oil. I think using the word “Indigenous” is very interesting when talking about carbon emissions because carbon does not exist on top of the UK and sits there. Actually, it’s a global issue. So you admit it here, it affects me in Pakistan.

My question for you is: why would we — the collective — allow the people who have caused the climate crisis have a stake in the future? Why should we let the people who have stabbed us to be the surgeon?”

Siddiqa has deep roots in Pakistan, where she was born and raised until the age of six, although she’d return to the country for significant periods of time at the ages of eight and fourteen. She recalls that the village she grew up in was completely made out of family, in an area of Pakistan surrounded by nature, just a few hours under the Himalayas and next to the Chenab River.

“I think [my upbringing] really affected the [idea] I have of Earth and nature and reciprocity. From an early age I was taught that the Earth was a conscious being, that it is aware of every human and animal residing on it, that it is aware of the footsteps we take and it knows when we walk on it with arrogance or disdain or the intention of hurting people and animals, and that it keeps a record. As much as [my work is] motivated by pain, I am also motivated by love for the earth and the wisdom of the people who came before me.”

Siddiqa notes that there is also something very primal that is driving her climate work, a feeling that led her to break down on her knees crying, when she returned to Pakistan at the age of fourteen.

“People have attributed the climate crisis in two ways, one is discussion of the future and the other is carbon emissions, but the missing thing is nomadic people and Indigenous peoples who don’t need to words “carbon emissions'' or “carbon footprint” or “methane” to know something is wrong in the air. When I went back home, I knew something was up. I was still fourteen, so I didn’t know much of the technical jargon I know today, but I knew that the earth is in pain and that atrocities are happening on it.”

Pakistan is the eighth most affected country in the world by climate change. More than 30 million Pakistani people have died since 2016 due to heat waves, flooding, and a lack of clean water. In fact the Chenab River to which her family livelihood depended on for years until it became a dumping ground for chemical fertilizers and other pollutants that not only severely harmed crop yield and fishing industry, but also the people of her village. Siddiqa’s grandmother developed polio in her late fifties and her grandfather developed blood cancer as a result of river’s toxicity. They both died in their late sixties. This pollutant-caused hardship was only exacerbated by the fact that Pakistan suffered the brunt of the United States’ “war on terrorism,” with bombs going off every few months in the inner city and attacks on civilians.

The coastal community of Coney Island — a predominantly Black and Brown neighborhood where Siddiqa now resides — also finds itself subject to geographical, economic, and racial injustice, and their negative environmental effects. In fact, there is a power plant right behind Siddiqa’s house, at the center of the island where all residents can breathe in toxins. This is to say that the climate crisis is an issue very personal to Siddiqa.

There was a full circle moment when I was unashamedly stalking Siddiqa’s Instagram in preparation for our conversation, it was a post of a cactus assortment dated back to April 18, 2018, which she captioned “I think I want to be an environmentalist.” Since then, Siddiqa has helped organize a 300,000-person strike on the streets of New York City in September 2019, a protest in Columbia University’s library — demanding that the institution divest from fossil fuels — in October 2019, founded Fossil Free University and Polluters Out. She has undoubtedly become a leading voice in the climate movement, branded by many as an activist and environmentalist.

But it appears that Siddiqa herself has largely divorced both labels, per a subsequent Instagram post this past June, citing the commodification of the word “activist,” used by many primarily as a resumé-packer, as opposed to giving back to the people.

“The philosophy I was raised with is that we human beings are mere visitors on the earth. We are temporary, we are passing, and stamping yourself with the term “activist” does the opposite. It takes ownership of something, whether it’s climate or advocacy.” 

If not an “activist,” I’d characterize Siddiqa as a storyteller. When I asked her to show me what in her room really represented her and why, Siddiqa pulled out a book of poetry she wrote and self-published with the help of her old high school English teacher and a printing press. For Siddiqa, poetry was first a way for her to overcome the language and materialistic barriers of the United States, and it has since evolved into a source of her protest.

“For me, [poetry is] a source of rebellion in of itself, to remind people of hope and love and also contest what is going on through written word, because it demarcates it, it documents it, and it leaves a memory. Protest is fleeting, speech is fleeting, and so many of colonized peoples’ languages were taken away from them, their books were taken away from them, their stories were burned, and so it is a reclamation of all that is happening, it is a documentation, but it’s also a source of rebellion and a manner for me to articulate all that I’m seeing [...]

A lot of my work is asking people to gamble on themselves and humanity and that’s how my poetry is protest, because it does the same thing. It reminds people to love themselves a lot, to invest in a tomorrow.”

I ask Siddiqa what she loves about the climate justice movement:

“My Black, Brown, Indigenous, and people of color family,” she answers. “I wrote something earlier today that I can read to you, which is, “There is something so beautiful in the eyes of the guardians of the earth. I don’t need words to know that once upon a time, before the soul left the body, we were all siblings. We were given the same task, same eyes, different tongues, and sent away to far away lands. Our meeting was written thousands of years ago by the Creator, by the ancient spirits.” And this week at COP, that was proven to be true to me. The most content I felt was with other guardians of the Earth. I spent a lot of my time outside of COP with people from the Ecuadorian Amazon, and the Brazilian Amazon, and the Pacific Islanders, and my friends from Indigenous nations in Latin America [...] I think part of the climate justice movement is indeed beyond the scientific and the tangible. There is heart and soul here.”

As for Polluters Out — Siddiqa knows that the task is not done.

“Polluters haven’t been kicked out of the Conference of the Parties. In fact, it has been the complete opposite. Part of [continuing our work] absolutely will be spreading education that the Conference of the Parties — which is supposed to mitigate the climate crisis and is supposed to produce an international policy to save the people and the earth from dying — is in fact being written by the same people that caused this crisis in the first place.

People forget that the fossil fuel industry is indeed one of the most powerful, wealthiest, cruel, and corrupt institutions on the face of the earth today. They control governments, governments don’t control them. We’re dealing with bad guys. There’s blood and dead bodies associated with these names. 

When I criticize BP, I’m not just doing it for the hell of it, they killed people in the Mexican Gulf; when I talk about Shell, it’s not just Shell incorporated, they’ve murdered people in the Niger Delta; Chevron has thrown people in jail and murdered people in the Ecuadorian Amazon.”

Both Polluters Out and Fossil Free University will continue mass educating and mobilizing until a conflict of interest policy is signed by the 92 nations that make up the UN and accepted by the fossil fuel industry.

Because this kind of work often involves capturing the attention of the public, Siddiqa knows that her face is among those commonly circulated around the media and that this may make her work seem “all-glamorous and protest-y.” But, she emphasizes that most of climate work is long and tedious, composed of notes, meetings, and over-read fossil fuel industry reports.

Finally, I ask Siddiqa what grounds her in a the midst of all of this busy work:

“Reminders it’s bigger than me, that the word youth and the concept of youth is only temporary,” she says. “I am growing older. I’m not going to be a youth advocate for longer and that’s okay, in the sense that it is so much bigger than all of us. Wouldn’t it be so amazing that 300 years from now, people will look back at these very moments, of this time in history, at you and at me and say, “These kids walked out of their schools to save the planet, and these guardians of the earth came together and demanded an end to an institution that was hurting it.” And that it was worth it, and they did right by us.”

Image: Pamela EA @pamela__ea