A new front has been opened in the never-ending war against the Mercator projection. The African Union endorses Correct the Map’s campaign to replace the Mercator projection (which diminishes the relative size of Africa) with the Equal Earth projection. I think it’s awfully interesting that they’re proposing Equal Earth instead of the Peters map: Equal Earth is a better choice for maps of the world than the Peters or the Mercator, but then so are dozens of other projections. That the campaign against the Mercator is no longer necessarily a campaign for the Peters is something to take note of. [Andrew Middleton]

Though I’m still wrapping my head around the idea that campaigning against the Mercator is still a thing. Really, still? After all, it’s been decades since the Mercator was the dominant projection on wall maps. A quick look at the catalogues of Stanfords and World of Maps suggests maybe one in ten wall maps of the world use the Mercator, and the ones that do seem to be second-tier publications at best (because it’s been known for a long time that the Mercator is shit at being a world map). I guess the Mercator is too good a metaphor for colonialism and foreign domination to let go of it.

But then I have no idea which maps are used in classrooms, in Africa or anywhere else. And I’m often surprised at how much Mercator I see in online maps and infographics, because the tools they use default to Web Mercator. Web Mercator is perfectly fine—at large scales. Most online map providers use Web Mercator at all zoom levels (Apple Maps zooms out to a globe on Apple Silicon but not on older Intel Macs, Google offers globe view as an option on desktop). Web Mercator shows up a lot where an alternative would’ve been better. So it’s not like there isn’t a point here.

Previously: The Peters Map Is Fighting the Last War.