“Hey Everybody!”
President Barack Obama joined Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook Live to talk about entrepreneurship, but he also warned that as more economies grew around the world, their energy needs would destroy the planet as a result of climate change.
“There are entire continents, sub-Saharan Africa or the Indian sub-continent where people are developing rapidly, they’re getting connected,” he said. “They’re going to need electricity, they’re going to need energy, but if they duplicate the ways that we produce energy here, or have in the past, then the entire planet is under water.”
Obama urged the world to use social media to work together to solve climate change before it was too late.
But Obama also paid homage to the Facebook CEO, praising him for contributing to the social media revolution.
“Well, if you think about just 2008, and what’s happened in social media, as something that you helped to lead obviously, that has been an incredible transformation,” Obama said.
“We didn’t talk about this beforehand,” Zuckerberg informed his viewers awkwardly.
“No we did not,” Obama replied, but praised Zuckerberg for social media changing politics, education, and economics.
“That’s powerful,” he said, praising platforms like Facebook for changing the world.
Obama added that social media was disruptive, which could cause fear in some communities.
“I think you’re always going to have people who react to all this new stuff by saying, ‘That’s a little scary,’” he said.
Later Obama glowingly praised Zuckerberg for being a role model for young people.
“You could see, Mark, when you met some of these young entrepreneurs, all of them look up to you as a role model and Facebook as an example of the transformative power of one good idea and the doggedness and the determination to build it out,” he said.