For more than 450 years, we have looked at the world through the Mercator projection, developed in 1569. It was an excellent tool for sailors, but it has not been great at representing land area: the closer territories are to the poles, the more they “bulge”.
The clearest example is Greenland and Africa. On the map, they look comparable, although Africa is about 14 times larger. The huge continent has been visually shrunk almost like a tin can.
Supporters of the campaign believe that a map affects not only how we perceive the size of places, but also our sense of the importance of different regions. Those of us who live in a huge country know how this visual effect works.
Now the UN General Assembly has backed a resolution calling for broader use of equal-area projections that more accurately reflect the sizes of continents. The resolution was supported by 164 countries, with only the United States voting against it. Apparently, it really does not want to get smaller.
