The Earth has long been conceptualized via the figure of the globe. The confrontation between an ahistorical, disinterested eye and an external, inert world seen only from afar seems rather too clearly required by a predatory culture. For the Earth is conceived as a uniform and unified totalizing whole that can be appropriated, divided, and exploited at the risk of endangering life. In these terms, the planet never amounts to anything more than an abstract ball structured with vertical lines, horizontal parallels, and right angles: a homogeneous, continuous, universal space.