Exploding Population

Abstract

As Walt Whitman watched the multitudes commuting between Brooklyn and Manhattan in the days before the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, he dreamt of the multitude that would make that crossing in the future. He could not have imagined the much larger population that has been born in recent years to challenge the future of Earth.

Crowds of men and women attired in your usual costumes, how curious you are to me! On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home, are more curious to me than you suppose, And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.

Walt Whitman, from “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”