Obama takes on climate change in first Facebook post

President Barack Obama unveiled his own personal Facebook page Monday, giving people a small tour of the White House’s South Lawn and explaining why he is heading to Paris for global talks on fighting climate change.

In a brief video, the president explains he is heading to the French capital for the United Nations conference on climate change in part to preserve the country’s national parks, which the South Lawn and Ellipse are considered part of.

“I want to make sure the beauty of this particular national park, but also national parks all across the country and our planet, are going to be there for Malia, Sasha, their kids and their grandkids for generations to come,” Obama said.

The Facebook page appears different from the Barack Obama page, which is run by Organizing For Action, the nonprofit group that formerly ran Obama’s presidential campaigns, and is primarily an advocacy and campaigning tool. That page describes him as a politician, whereas the new personal page calls him a public figure.

The new page, the president writes, is “a place where you can hear directly from me, and share your own thoughts and stories. (You can expect some just-for-fun stuff, too.)”

The page follows similar action Obama took with Twitter, launching his own Twitter handle, @POTUS, aside from the @BarackObama handle run by OFA and the @WhiteHouse account run by White House’s digital team.

The digital team is a group of 20, led by White House Chief Digital Officer Jason Goldman, which manages Obama’s Twitter account, along with the White House’s Facebook page, Instagram account and YouTube channel. The group was profiled over the weekend by the New York Times, which reported its efforts to “establish a digital identity” for Obama in an age when “the old conventions of White House communications — a major policy address, a television or newspaper interview or a written statement — are less and less effective.”

The video closes with Obama asking the American people to talk more about climate change.

“We’re going to need you on this,” he said. “If all of America is joining around this critical project, then we can have confidence that we are doing right by future generations.”