ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we review the history of mapping forests, moving from the pre-industrial commodification of forests, through the capitalization of plantations, to the globalization of forests with the advent of satellite imagery such as the famous ‘blue marble’ photographs taken from the Moon. We argue that global images of the Earth serve as cosmograms, meaning that they encapsulate a world view and world order (cosmology) in a single image. ‘Green marble’ images of the world’s forests are therefore also cosmograms, and when they are instrumentalized in digital mapping platforms, they participate in a cosmology that supports the management of global forest health from a computer terminal. We name this cosmology Google Gaia and discuss its implications for environmental justice.
