AMERICAN JOURNAL • April 28, 2020
In Maine, Earth Day events in 1970 took place on most college campuses. At the University of Maine in Portland, a group calling itself People Living Under Garbage, or PLUG, gave out tongue-in-cheek awards to major polluters. The Unmitigated Gall Award went to Great Northern Paper Company. S.D. Warren Paper Company was given the Master Polluter Award. Portland got a special award for “dumping unbelievable amounts of raw sewage into Portland Harbor each day.” These days, Republicans under Trump are the enemies of the environment, working frantically to roll back environmental protection laws, but the environmental movement in Maine in the 1960s and 1970s was led by Republicans. ~ Edgar Allen Beem