Peter M. Douglas (August 22, 1942 – April 1, 2012) was an environmental activist, UCLA law graduate, and principal author of Proposition 20, an initiative in 1972 that created the

California Coastal Commission The California Coastal Commission (CCC) is a state agency within the California Natural Resources Agency with quasi-judicial control of land and public access along the state's coastline. Its mission as defined in the California Coastal Act is " ...

. He served as its Executive Director for 26 years. He was also co-author of the 1976 Coastal Act.

Early life

Douglas was born Peter Michael Ehlers in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

on August 22, 1942. At the age of two his family's home was destroyed by Allied planes during the bombing of Berlin. After WWII he immigrated to the United States in 1950 with his mother and sister, and changed his last name upon becoming an American citizen. His grandmother was harpsichordist Alice Ehlers. As a young man he enjoyed surfing off Redondo Beach and camping in the desert and mountains of Southern California. He studied in

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

and

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

. He earned an undergraduate degree in psychology and a graduate degree in law at UCLA, where he focused on

antiwar An anti-war movement (also ''antiwar'') is a social movement, usually in opposition to a particular nation's decision to start or carry on an armed conflict, unconditional of a maybe-existing just cause. The term anti-war can also refer to pa ...

and

social justice Social justice is justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society. In Western and Asian cultures, the concept of social justice has often referred to the process of ensuring that individuals fu ...

movements and co-founded a law collective. He also studied abroad for one year in Germany. After completing his law degree in 1969, he and his German-born wife, Rotraut, then moved abroad for a few years. He was not yet focused on environmentalism.

Career

He returned to the U.S. in 1971 and accepted a job in Sacramento on the staff of then-Assemblyman Alan Sieroty, a Democrat from Los Angeles, who put him in charge of writing laws protecting the state's coastline. He was the main author of laws Proposition 20 in 1972 and the 1976 Coastal Act, which created and made permanent the California Coastal Commission. Later for 26 years he was executive director of the Commission, the regulatory agency he helped create. He fought the development of homes, industry, and infrastructure in California. He considered among the Commission’s most significant achievements defeating a proposed toll road skirting San Onofre State Beach, a

liquefied natural gas Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is natural gas (predominantly methane, CH4, with some mixture of ethane, C2H6) that has been cooled down to liquid form for ease and safety of non-pressurized storage or transport. It takes up about 1/600th the volu ...

terminal off the Ventura County coast and the development of

Hearst Ranch Hearst may refer to: Places * Hearst, former name of Hacienda, California, United States * Hearst, Ontario, town in Northern Ontario, Canada * Hearst, California, an unincorporated community in Mendocino County, United States * Hearst Island, an i ...

. He considered the decision to allow housing subdivisions along the Bolsa Chica wetlands one of its worst failures. Douglas's work helped keep one of the world’s most beautiful coastlines largely undeveloped. In 2006, two years after recovering from Stage 4 cancer, Douglas told the New York Times he set a match to a pile of dead leaves he had poured gasoline onto, igniting an explosion that sent him flying. He recovered from the serious burns that resulted. One of his most lasting statements about the coast is. "The coast is never saved, it is always being saved."

Death

Douglas died of lung and throat cancer on April 1, 2012 at the home of his sister in

La Quinta, California La Quinta ( Spanish for "The Fifth") is a desert resort city in Riverside County, California, United States. Located between Indian Wells and Indio, it is one of the nine cities of the Coachella Valley. The population was 37,467 at the 2010 c ...

Early life

Career

Death

References

Further reading