The United States’ climate envoy, Todd Stern, appeared on Capitol Hill Thursday to deliver what has become a depressingly familiar update. Yes, the chasm between the developed and developing worlds remains wide and deep; yes, talks are progressing with key players like China and India; yes, all sides are taking the issue seriously; no, there are no details to report; but yes, yes, of course, there is hope.

For more detail, check Bloomberg and Reuters, but suffice it to say that reporters in the room were generally left scratching their heads as to why Stern had been called to testify in the first place. And perhaps lawmakers felt the same way: Only seven members of the House Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming showed up; three stuck it out for the duration.

Indeed, there’s no particular reason why anyone would expect Stern to have any major progress to report at this point. The most likely venues for breaking news come later this month, when the United Nations holds its Summit on Climate Change in New York and the G20 convenes on Pittsburgh. Moreover, Congress has just returned to town after a lengthy August recess, and pretty much everybody, including President Barack Obama, is talking about health care, not climate.

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Just as importantly, those who are talking about climate are focused on the Senate, where Democratic leaders recently cited health care, a hip surgery and the death of fellow Senator Ted Kennedy as reasons for delaying the release of their climate legislation. Not mentioned in the release, notably posted here on the Republican opposition blog, are the obvious difficulties that Democrats have encountered in their search for votes.

None of this is terribly surprising, but it does illustrate the challenges ahead. For now, most climate advocates are sitting tight, recognizing that the administration and Congress need to put health care to rest before turning to global warming. This will make it exceedingly difficult getting a bill out of the Senate before the global warming summit in Copenhagen this December.

That’s a set back for the administration, which has repeatedly said it wants to have legislation in hand before the meeting, but getting health care and a climate bill out in one year was always a long-shot. The question now is whether Obama will bypass Congress and play his strongest card: direct regulation of greenhouse gases by the Environmental Protection Agency. Rumours abound about EPA laying the groundwork for a decision, perhaps as early as this month (see Greenwire for a quick analysis of the issue).

Going it alone is by no means a sure bet. It would take time to craft and implement regulations, and there would inevitably be lawsuits. But it would get the ball rolling in a very serious way, and in theory, it might even inspire a few lawmakers who are sitting on the fence to reengage in the debate. We’ll see.