Peter M. Douglas

Peter M. Douglas
Peter M. Douglas in 1976
Executive Director of the California Coastal Commission
In office 1977–2012
Personal details
Salary	$213,000[1]

Peter M. Douglas (August 22, 1942 – 2012) was a German American environmental activist, UCLA law graduate, and principal author of Proposition 20, an initiative in 1972 that created the California Coastal Commission. He served as its Executive Director for 26 years. He was also co-author of the 1976 Coastal Act.^[2][3][4]

Douglas was born in the German capital of Berlin on August 22, 1942 as Peter Ehlers (he changed his last name once he obtained American citizenship).^[4] He died of lung and throat cancer in 2012.^[3] As the executive director of the California Coastal Commission he earned $213,000 during 2011 in addition to benefits.^[1]

Early life[]

Born Peter Michael Ehlers in Berlin on Aug. 22, 1942, (he and his sister changed their last name upon becoming American citizens), Mr. Douglas and his mother, Maria, and sister, Christiane, left their house when it was destroyed by Allied planes in the Allied bombing of Berlin. After WWII he immigrated to the United States in 1950.^[4][3]

Bombing of Berlin in July 1944

As a young man he enjoyed surfing off Redondo Beach and camping in the desert and mountains of Southern California.^[4][3]

He studied in California and Germany. He earned an undergraduate degree in psychology and a graduate degree in law at UCLA, where he focused on antiwar and social justice 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.^[4][3]

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.^[4][3]

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.^[4][3]

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 terminal off the Ventura County coast and the development of Hearst Ranch. He considered the decision to allow housing subdivisions along the Bolsa Chica wetlands one of its worst failures.^[4][3] Douglas's work helped keep one of the world’s most beautiful coastlines largely undeveloped.^[5]

“The goals and objectives of the Coastal Act are to better the environment, give due-process rights and protect the liberties of property owners. Unfortunately, Peter Douglas and the Coastal Commission ignored the protections that are guaranteed in the act,” said attorney Ronald Zumbrun, who led a constitutional challenge to Douglas's work.^[3]

Bearded and usually wearing Birkenstock sandals, a bolo tie and hiking pants, he was known to sometimes pull his biodiesel car to the side of a highway and stand in front of bulldozers operating without a permit his agency might have withheld. He described himself as a “radical pagan heretic,” who often spoke of his deep spiritual bond with nature.^[4][3] In 2006, two years after recovering from Stage 4 cancer, Mr. 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.^[5]

He was “the world’s best bureaucratic street fighter,” Steve Blank, a member of the California Coastal Commission, told The New York Times in 2010.^[4][3]

Death[]

Mr. Douglas died of lung and throat cancer in 2012. As his cancer progressed, he wrote of his beliefs about life and death in lengthy, highly philosophical emails to friends. He halted mainstream Western medical treatment in favor of Eastern therapies, abandoned his strict vegan diet and wound up outliving his doctors’ prognoses by many months.^[4][3]

He died at the home of his sister, Christiane, though Douglas enjoyed living in coastal Larkspur, CA, and had another home in rural Northern California by a river near the Oregon border.^[4][3]

References[]