(The chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, Jim Connaughton, and Undersecretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs Dr. Paula Dobriansky will discuss the policy and implementation committee meeting of the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate.)

KARSNER: Yes, I'm Andy Karsner. I'm the assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy at the Department of Energy.

And I just overheard the last bit of your question. And I wanted to comment because I'm rather new inside the government, but I have extensive experience in the private sector as an international project developer.

[...]

So you have to bear in mind, if we want to adapt our role to catalyzing market forces to steer the capital to the desired result, government has to have a proper perspective, which is to be iterative and catalytic with the private sector...

QUESTION: I'm sorry, what did you say?

KARSNER: I said government must hold the...

QUESTION: But be iterative? Is that what you said?

KARSNER: Iterative, correct.

QUESTION: What's that?

KARSNER: What is iterative?

QUESTION: Iterative, in this sense.

KARSNER: Happy to give you my definition on that. You might have to check Wikipedia in case I go awry.

Iterative means having a relationship where one reacts off of the other as opposed to, sort of, maintaining the delusion that government can do this all by itself. $52 million, even in Washington, is a whole lot of money and a very, very serious commitment to being catalytic.