Yesterday (March 23), the Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing on pending nominees to senior positions within the Department of Defense. Sharon Burke was nominated for the position of Director of Operations Energy Plans and Programs. Sharon is currently the Vice President at the Center for a New American Security, where she works in their 'Natural Security' section . CNAS' blog, Natural Security, is a must read for those of us working in this area.
This is a new position at the DoD that I believe was created in the same legislation -- authored by then-Senators Clinton and Warner -- that directed the DoD to include an analysis of the security threats of climate change in the QDR, which I discussed earlier this year when the QDR was released.
You can watch the webcast of the hearing here. I've flipped through a good bit of it, and I was impressed by her exchange with Senator Inhofe, who can be a tough questioner of people whome he deems to disagree with him on climate change. Also impressive is that she was introduced by former Senator Warner, who has been extremely active on energy security and climate security in his post-Senate career. The Wilson Center's New Security Beat blog and CNAS's Natural Security blog have also written about her hearing.
On an additional note, Sharon and I are both members of the Senator Hagel alumni association, though we never overlapped in our time there, and I believe her time there was relatively short. Just another example of the strong alumni group throughout the Washington area. I hope that she is quickly confirmed, and I wish her well at her new job.
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