The Defense Department gets a new crusader in the war against climate change, EPA a new inspector general and the Energy Department two new assistant secretaries among more than 60 presidential nominees the Senate approved this morning.

Sharon Burke is the new director of operational energy plans and programs at the Defense Department and will bring with her a belief that climate change is threatening national security. Burke has testified that view before Congress in her current role as vice president at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington, D.C.-based national security research center. Speaking before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last July, Burke cautioned against using more coal to substitute for imported oil "absent a major breakthrough" in capturing and sequestering carbon emissions, and she noted that natural resources may be a key to winning the war in Afghanistan.

"Achieving U.S. goals in the region may well depend on our ability to tie natural resources into national security," she said. "Climate change, for example, may not be a threat that soldiers can attack and defeat, but it is likely to affect the safety and prosperity of every American, both through its effects on global stability and on our local environments."

Burke -- whom President Obama nominated in December 2009 -- was previously a policy adviser at the State Department and speechwriter to former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Defense Secretary William Cohen.

Arthur Elkins will be EPA's new inspector general. Obama nominated Elkins for the position back in November 2009. He has been an associate general counsel at EPA's Office of General Counsel and was an assistant prosecutor and public defender in Ohio.

Jeffrey Lane will be assistant Energy secretary for congressional and intergovernmental affairs. Lane is a Capitol Hill veteran, having been chief of staff for Interior Secretary Ken Salazar when Salazar was a Democratic senator from Colorado, as well as for Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., and former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C. He was also a senior aide to former Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota.

The Senate also approved the nomination of Patricia Hoffman to be assistant Energy secretary for electricity delivery and energy reliability. Hoffman has been principal deputy assistant secretary in those areas and has held several jobs at the department over 14 years.

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