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.

[3][2] 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 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.

[4] 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.

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