The U.S. was the only country to not support a United Nations resolution adjusting the appearance of Africa and other regions on world maps.
The body passed the “Correct the Map” initiative by a margin of 164 to one, with six nations abstaining from the vote.
The resolution, which was introduced by the West African country Togo, does not require the abandonment of the long-used Mercator projection. It instead encourages the use of equal-area projections that more accurately depict relative country sizes.
Yaryna Ferencevych, the deputy U.S. representative to the U.N. Economic and Social Council, said in a statement explaining the U.S.’s vote that this measure, “mocks the work and purpose of this institution.”
“Instead of focusing on genuine problems of international peace, prosperity, or good relations, this body is debating map projects from the 16th century, and their role in promoting reparations and ‘cognitive justice,’” she said.
This administration is such a fucking embarrassment. What “ideological agenda”?
The cons are famous for accusing everyone else of having an ideological agenda, even as they are pushing an extremist one that is extremely unpopular.
Classic DARVO tactics. This is the group that thinks there is some ideological agenda and nefarious things are afoot to merely recognize that people (including gay and trans) have a right to exist. Of course, they don’t acknowledge their own efforts to crush the rights of those people as “ideological”.
US veto power on simple uncontroversial legislation/policy is what harms UN credibility. This is a simple ovalization of 2d map for greater accuracy of area, and even 16th century trade routes (pacific doesn’t matter).
Considering the US’ recent actions, I’m pretty sure that backfired.
There is a weird narrative where people pretend like there’s some conspiracy to make countries near the equator appear smaller on maps.
The reality is the Mercator projection was made for navigation purposes. The world is round and there is no projection of a globe on a 2D surface that will ever be accurate. No one is trying to kick people down by choosing one projection over the other because none of them are going to be accurate. All maps are made with the general assumption that people understand the world is actually round and they should account for that. This kind of debate edges on flat earth kinds of silliness where people are being deliberately ignorant about how maps work in favour of dumb conspiracy theories.
Sure it’s probably not worth opposing, but it’s also a bunch of silliness that isn’t worth proposing either. It is a sign the UN is disconnected from the actual problems of the world when they’re worried about fucking map projections. Is it going to be international law that we can’t use the Mercator maps for navigation, which is what they’re designed for? Does the UN even understand that for some people a map isn’t just a decoration to be put on a wall, but something that has a purpose?
It doesn’t matter if there was a “conspiracy”. It’s inaccurate and therefore stupid to maintain.
The UN doing this doesn’t mean they’re not focusing much more intensely on other issues and anyone claiming that is a fucking moron.
The US being the only one opposing this makes the US the only one pushing some dumbass conspiracy theory.
All 2 dimensional projections of a 3 dimensional object are inaccurate. This a bicycle shed kind of issue. “I like this map because it makes my country look bigger durrrrr.”
Look at the UN flag. It’s not Mercator, but it portrays Australia as being about twice as wide as Canada. That’s not accurate (Canada is about 1000 km wider than Australia), so does the UN flag need to change?
I’m from Canada and I don’t think it needs to change because I know that maps are flat and the world is not flat. If you’re worried about accuracy, you have to ban all flat maps and only allow globes.
People that don’t understand the concept of political capital and opportunity costs are morons.
Voting against it is kinda dumb, countries should’ve done as Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Estonia, etc. and just abstained because this is dumb shit that’s worth anyone’s time when there’s real problems in the world.
This is just the UN version of the Trump renaming Gulfs and Lakes.