I’m kinda surprised there weren’t tons of countries against this. For its faults in representing size the Mercator projection is great at representing direction (that’s what it was intended for after all). For Japan, New Zealand, and even Austrailia this places North at really awkward angles, making what are in reality straight lines appear curved. If anything, this is even more euro centric than the Mercator projection due to the amount of straight line distortion applied being longitude dependent, centered around Europe. I’d also expect Russia to be against it since it makes them look smaller, even if they don’t have the same distortion problem as countries directly opposite Western Europe.
The projection should have been changed, but it should be a a compromise projection like Robinson or Winkel Tripel that doesn’t perfectly preserve area, distance, shape, or direction, but also doesn’t horribly distort any of them.
I’m kinda surprised there weren’t tons of countries against this. For its faults in representing size the Mercator projection is great at representing direction (that’s what it was intended for after all). For Japan, New Zealand, and even Austrailia this places North at really awkward angles, making what are in reality straight lines appear curved. If anything, this is even more euro centric than the Mercator projection due to the amount of straight line distortion applied being longitude dependent, centered around Europe. I’d also expect Russia to be against it since it makes them look smaller, even if they don’t have the same distortion problem as countries directly opposite Western Europe.
The projection should have been changed, but it should be a a compromise projection like Robinson or Winkel Tripel that doesn’t perfectly preserve area, distance, shape, or direction, but also doesn’t horribly distort any of them.