(Dobbs) Using Maps That Show the Actual Size of Countries and Continents

The United States calls it a “radical ideological project.”

Sep 6

There are some stories in the news that don’t make the difference between life and death, but they are important because they are prompts to remind us that the sooner Donald Trump’s party is kicked out of power and the sooner he himself is gone too, there’s a chance that the United States can regain its glory.

Right now he is doing everything he can to eviscerate it.

Today, this is that story.

The African Union is a political organization of which every African nation, all 54 of them, is a member. Its purpose is to enhance the prosperity, the security, and the global status of Africa.

Two years ago, African nations launched a campaign. They called it “Correct the Map” and it’s about the Mercator map, which was created by the Dutch-speaking mapmaker Gerardus Mercator in 1569. For perspective, that was the same year that Catholics in England tried to depose Queen Elizabeth I and replace her with Mary Queen of Scots.

The gist of the campaign is, the Mercator map, although created mainly for seafarers with the best tools of the time and on which every schoolchild around the world has been weaned, does not accurately show the size of Africa. As The Washington Post describes the Mercator map, “The farther from the equator countries are, the larger they appear. Greenland, for example, appears the same size as Africa even though in reality Africa is 14 times larger.” The “Correct the Map” movement says on its website, “For 450 years, we have based our understanding of Africa, and the world, on a map that is wrong. In fact, you could fit the United States, China, India, Japan, Mexico and much of Europe into Africa and still have land to spare.”

When I read that, it just seemed wrong. I mean, Africa’s bigger than all those places combined?

But I did the math. They’re right. Using rounded off figures, the United States is 3.8 million square miles, China is 3.7 million, India is 1.2 million, Mexico and Japan together are less than a million. In total, that comes to fewer than ten million square miles. The continent of Africa covers nearly 11.7 million.

So the point is well taken: on the Mercator map, Africa looks smaller than it really is. And this brings consequences: as the campaign says, it gives a false sense of superiority in the global north over the global south. If Africa were more accurately represented— and other things being equal, which they’re not— perceptions of its power might be bigger than they are.

Don’t worry, we’ll get back to Trump and his role in this in a moment.

What the “Correct the Map” movement proposed was a new kind of map, known as “Equal Earth.” In the context of “nothing’s perfect,” it distorts the shapes of continents but not as much the size.

So Friday the African Union brought the whole issue to the United Nations. The U.N. can’t tell anybody which map to use, but a resolution was put to a vote. If it passed, it would urge individual governments and international organizations, technology companies and educational systems to switch from the Mercator map to the “Equal Earth” map.

164 member nations voted yes. Only one voted no. Donald Trump’s America.

Why in the world would the United States try to stand in the way of a resolution like this, an effort to more accurately exhibit the relative sizes of countries and continents? We got our answer from Trump’s deputy representative of the U.S. to the U.N. Economic and Social Council: it is a “radical ideological project.” She said, “Resolutions like this and the ideological agenda they promote, are barnacles on our work here, and the reason this institution is losing its credibility.”

As if the United States under Donald Trump is a mainstay anymore of the U.N.’s work.

[Salon] Using Maps That Show the Actual Size of Countries and Continents

(Dobbs) Using Maps That Show the Actual Size of Countries and Continents

The United States calls it a “radical ideological project.”