By Robin Bravender |
Ike Irby has been a top climate adviser to the vice president dating back to her days on Capitol Hill.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ longtime climate adviser is a 37-year-old Colorado native who has a Ph.D. in marine science, a penchant for electric buses and a miniature poodle named Newton who’s a member of the KHive.
Ike Irby, a consultant and senior campaign adviser to Harris, started on her Senate staff as a fellow back in 2017. He moved to the White House with Harris in January 2021 as a top climate adviser. Irby left his White House gig early this year, but he remains an influential player in Harris’ orbit and could become an even more prominent voice shaping climate policy if the vice president wins her White House bid in 2024.
He first landed in Harris’ Capitol Hill office in 2017 as a science and technology policy fellow and stayed on as a policy adviser to the California senator. …
Irby earned a Ph.D. in marine science from William & Mary’s School of Marine Science at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. His 2017 dissertation looks at the impacts of climate change on water quality in the Chesapeake Bay. …
After Trump dismissed the impacts of climate change during a 2020 briefing on California’s wildfires, Irby slammed Trump’s comment to a state official that “It’ll just start getting cooler, you just watch.”
On his personal social media account, Irby wrote, it’s “easy to laugh at this but the President’s complete denial and disregard of science is deadly. From climate change to COVID, he is actively endangering our lives. We so desperately need a President who listens to science and takes action based on science. #BidenHarris2020.”
He praised Harris’ legislation to protect public lands in California in June 2020, writing, “As @SenKamalaHarris pushes to protect our public lands, Trump is focused on helping his buddies in Big Oil. Dude gotta go.”
…
As Senator in 2019, @VP Harris introduced the Clean School Bus Act, the first bill dedicated to electrifying school buses.
Now, thanks to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act, school buses across the nation are going electric. https://t.co/SaJAm2EEun
— Ike Irby (@IkeIrby46) December 19, 2022
Irby worked in the vice president’s office through the enactment of the massive infrastructure and climate legislation and regularly lauded Harris’ influence on those laws. Harris cast the tie-breaking vote to secure the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, the biggest climate law in U.S. history. …
During his time in the vice president’s office, Irby joined weekly meetings with the White House Climate Policy Office and traveled with Harris to international climate negotiations in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, last year. Ellison now joins those weekly meetings.
