“I’m the darn guy who caused all these problems,” Hall tells the seated group by way of introduction. He doesn’t let his PR handlers do any talking, and he doesn’t rein in the extent of his vision. Despite Vermont’s beauty, he points out, the state has high levels of pollution and sprawl, paired with poverty and unemployment. He recounts visiting Vermont as a boy, memories of which, along with Smith’s birthplace and memorial, drew him to this state, and says he would preserve the state’s natural grandeur. “In my crazy mind, two-thirds of Vermont would be wilderness and one-third would be the farms that are occupied, and you’d have 20 million people in Vermont,” he tells the group, slapping the table. “That’s a crazy idea. But that’s what I can lay out.”
That's about double the population density of New Jersey (currently the most densely populated state). On the other hand if you add New York City into New Jersey you have over 17 million people in an area smaller than Vermont.
