Pogo appeared on Walt Kelly’s anti-pollution Earth Day poster.
Pogo is the opossum protagonist of Walt Kelly’s long-running comic strip, which combined humorous animal adventures with political and social satire. Kelly frequently used the Okefenokee Swamp setting and its cast of animals to comment on human behavior, public policy, and pollution.
The Earth Day poster drew on Pogo’s environmental message, especially the famous line “We have met the enemy and he is us.” The wording became one of the most recognizable slogans associated with environmental responsibility. It argues that pollution is not an outside enemy alone; human choices and institutions help create the problem.
The character is easy to confuse with other famous comic-strip figures such as Garfield, Peanuts characters, or Doonesbury. Those strips also became culturally prominent, but Pogo was Kelly’s vehicle for ecological and political satire. Kelly’s work helped make environmental concerns accessible through popular cartoon imagery during the early Earth Day era.