A New World Map

The UN voted on a new world map earlier this month, and while most people claimed they didn't care, I was surprised by how popular the topic became.

I have a few videos that go viral every month, but 30+ million is a lot, even for me.

The map you probably learned in school is called the Mercator Projection (image below). It was designed in the 1500s by Gerardus Mercator and it's inherently flawed for a few reasons. For starters, squeezing a 3D shape onto a 2D surface requires sacrifices no matter what you do. That's just the nature of space.

If you pull the sticker off a globe and try to lay it flat on a table, there will be gaps.

Second, the Mercator was designed to preserve the angles and shapes of countries to help sailors plot a course in a straight line with a compass. If you stretch out a nation's size, then the distance of travel won't be as accurate. Basically, either the countries are true to size, or true to shape. You can't have both.

Hence, why Greenland looks about the same size as Africa, even though Africa is 14x larger than Greenland.

There's of course some Euro-centric qualities to the Mercator Projection like putting Europe smack-dab in the middle. But for the most part, it was designed for sailors.

Since we have GPS there's really no need to keep the proportions the way they are. Africa could do with some enlarging. Not only because it's misleading, but because size has a subconscious effect on the human psyche. It's a narrative.

The Foreign Minister from Togo said it best, "A map is never neutral. It shapes perceptions, influences how the place of peoples and continents in the world is understood."

Which is why on September 4th, 164 nations voted to adopt the Equal Earth Projection. Six countries abstained (Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova, Serbia, and Ukraine), and only one voted against. Can you guess who?

That's right, the United States.

The argument was that 'we have better things to be concerned about,' but that's rich coming from a country that's trying to change the names of buildings, lakes and gulfs like we have nothing else better to do. Besides, it is a concern to African nations and how they're perceived. So just vote yes and go back to renaming swamps or whatever it is you think is important.

This actually isn't the first time the proposal has come up. The Equal Earth Projection was designed by a team of cartographers back in 2018, and while some member states had already adopted it, it's only now being endorsed.

Personally, I like it. I've flown over northern Africa a lot, and this feels more accurate.

I'm still not sure why the video received over 30+ million views across platforms, but maybe it's because of how I pronounce Mercator.

Either way, I'm always amused by a world vote that overrules one petty nation.