There's clearly much inertia here toward getting Hillary the nod. We might as well look at how things are shaping up for her in the global-warming arena. "The Conversation" has begun and a good bit of it includes energy and the climate threat. A few things she has said so far aren't that great, but generally her focus has been strong with a demonstrated interest in developing her energy/warming policy ahead of much of the pack.
The fact that she is one of the few candidates who has offered energy-plan specifics. Mind you, much of the funding relies on oil-industry taxes which may have difficulty getting through to begin with. However, she's done the job of listing her priorities and has said how she would allot the funding she obtains. The negatives are her significant focus on "clean" coal, which is far from environmentally sound at this point, and "clean" diesel. She even introduced her plan from one such coal plant. With all the me-toos on support for dubious coal technology, it's become more difficult to grade the shades of gray between her and the rest, down to how much they emphasize this or that bad climate policy. For HRC, it might have been better if she had left that "energy gap" open this early in the game and listened to ideas as to how to achieve the most renewable, least emitting energy mix possible. There is however a lot of good with getting true clean investment proposals out early, and she's done that as part of the plan. She plans to offer considerable sums to research and rebates, and that is deserving of applause. As a frontrunner, she has in some ways set a bar.
Throughout her Conversation with America she has done well in communicating her global-warming message, with much more detail than her main opponent. Sometimes she has relied on the audience to broach the topic rather than pushing it herself. One of the project bosses here took issue with how she paired climate change with Darfur in the clip "Hillary lays out...". Nonetheless, it is noteworthy among the candidates that she takes time to discuss current policy measures and exactly where the current path (under Bush) is not enough. You can see here, she has address the topic at her events almost as much as Edwards or Richardson. It will be interesting to see how much she focuses on Gore's strongest issue as speculation grows about his entrance into the race.