The Earth is getting warmer and fossil fuel-burning power plants have a lot to do with it. That is why those who study climate and government policies say alternative energy sources are essential in order to avoid massive upheavals. Given present technology, wind power, either from land-based or offshore windmills, is considered the best, fastest way to make a difference. 

Other nonpolluting options, such as nuclear and hydroelectric, are problematic. And in the Northeast, large-scale solar arrays are less commercially viable than elsewhere and have been met with bitter community backlash where proposed. There is no easy answer, but steps must be taken to slow the rapid rise of global temperature. This is why towns, such as East Hampton, and states, such as New York, have made commitments to renewable sources.

East Hampton Town officials, however, and in particular the town trustees, seem cowed by a small, but outspoken, number of residents who oppose Deepwater Wind’s proposed South Fork Wind Farm. The project calls for 15 generating turbines about 25 miles south of Point Judith, R.I., and 35 miles east of Montauk. A cable connecting the wind farm to the Long Island power grid is supposed to come ashore somewhere in East Hampton Town, passing either under the trustee beach at Wainscott or at one of two state-owned locations on Napeague. It would produce about 90 megawatts, said to be enough to supply electricity to about 50,000 houses, which is more than twice the total number of residential properties in the entire town.

In exchange for town easements, if the cable comes ashore in Wainscott, Deepwater Wind has promised deal-sweeteners, including paying to bury overhead utility lines on Beach Lane and Wainscott’s Main Street, $1.5 million for water-quality projects, and other substantial perks. Should the town continue to stonewall Deepwater, it could easily withdraw its offers and instead bring the cable across dry land in Napeague State Park or Promised Land, where no town permits are required. As a Deepwater report earlier this year said: Most local zoning laws are superseded by state utility regulations.

Regardless of whether the commercial fishing industry has misgivings about it, wind power appears here to stay. Turbines capable of generating 190 megawatts for Connecticut customers are in the planning stages for a site south of Martha’s Vineyard. Other states in the region are soliciting proposals for far larger projects, one for up to 1,100 megawatts. (The Millstone Nuclear Power Station, by comparison, produces about 2,000 megawatts, which powers about two million houses.)

It is difficult to support the position that wind power is not a necessary component of a cleaner-energy future. Officials, and in particular the town trustees, must recognize their limited say, and work with Deepwater Wind rather than against it.

Access and amenities at Boys and Girls Harbor could be improved soon. This is a good thing, but a word of caution is necessary first. East Hampton Town officials are studying the preservation fund-purchased former summer camp properties on Three Mile Harbor, about 83 acres in all, and talking about how the site could be made more inviting for the public. Among the ideas are a covered picnic pavilion and a paved bike trail. 

The last piece of Boys and Girls Harbor became town property in 2011 in a $7.3 million deal. Subsequently, the owners of some neighboring houses fought hard to get guarantees from the town that its future use would be limited. A petition from opponents of the town purchase at the time listed soccer, volleyball, basketball, and baseball, outdoor lighting, and problems with large crowds among their concerns. As such things go, a lawsuit ensued. Eventually, the town agreed to a restrictive management plan that allowed for educational activities, bicycling, informal sports, and trail walks. Other sports and after-dark events were taken off the table.

As to the improvements now proposed, a surfaced path for bicycles and wheelchairs is a no-brainer. A good portion of the sports field area at the former camp is level and would be, as some have pointed out, a great place to learn to ride a bike. We are less enthusiastic about the pavilion, however. 

At Maidstone Park, the only fair point of comparison, the town’s upkeep has been wanting. For example, some picnickers there toss charcoal and ashes nearby, and the sand surrounding the structure is often littered with broken glass. Plus, the grim, bunker-like restroom there is something not even a hardened prison official would be proud of. If the town puts in a picnic pavilion at Boys and Girls Harbor, bathrooms will not be far behind. 

And, while we are on the subject of bathrooms, when is Town Hall going to deal with one at Fresh Pond in Amagansett, which is a prime suspect in the ongoing fecal contamination of the creek there? That dank cinder-block structure, too, is nothing to boast about.

Unless the town can figure out a way to add staff to assure that its existing picnic areas are properly looked after, it has no business adding any more. Consider that town workers are already barely able to keep up with summertime beach trash. A new, out of the way property to maintain might prove too much of a burden without adding staff and vehicles. Town board members are deluding themselves if they think the extra garbage produced there would take care of itself.

At this point, no refuse-producing or bathroom-demanding uses should be approved at Boys and Girls Harbor. It is easy to build things; taking care of them is another story.

It is forgivable that Americans might be distracted by all the scandals and dramatic missteps of the Trump presidency and miss the less-noticed efforts to dismantle existing policy, in particular, clean air and water protections. This week, Scott Pruitt, the embattled head of the Environmental Protection Agency, announced the rollback of vehicle emissions standards, which will increase the use of fossil fuels, helping industry but harming the environment. Also under the gun is the Clean Power Plan, an Obama administration attempt to limit greenhouse-effect carbon coming from electricity plants.

While people across the United States benefit from a healthy environment, those on the coasts are already experiencing accelerated erosion and other threats from sea level rise spurred by a warming climate. Greater damage from hurricanes and northeasters has become the norm. The distribution of once-common fish species is beginning to change, with effects all the way up the marine food chain, and causes harm to those whose livelihoods come from the bays and ocean. 

Shellfish stocks are at risk as associated water acidification weakens their shells. On land and sea, invasive plants and animals taking advantage of more favorable conditions are wreaking havoc. As much as the Trump outlook is creating upheaval in policy, it is taking reckless aim at the planet Earth. 

The administration hopes to scrap the vehicle fleet requirement for a 50-miles-per-gallon average fuel economy across a manufacturer’s entire small truck and car line by 2025. Doing away with this Obama-era rule was something the auto industry hoped for and President Trump promised. Mr. Pruitt has not said what fuel economy level his E.P.A. and corporate back-channel whisperers would find acceptable.

Environmental groups say that the move would sharply curtail the development of electric and high-efficiency vehicles and worsen air quality. A court fight from the State of California, which has the right to set its own emissions rules, is likely, but it would not necessarily beat back the Trump administration’s determination to weaken the protections. One thing is clear: More assaults lie ahead. 

Supporting candidates for Congress and state and local elections who make the environment a top priority is key. In polls, more than 70 percent of Americans — even in those places Donald Trump won — want clean air. Candidates who ignore that and other environmental concerns do so at their own political peril.

Remember those giant “Welcome to New York” signs that appeared in Montauk two summers ago — only to be taken down after the public pointed out that they were not just ugly but totally pointless? They were part of a campaign funded by the state that was supposed to boost tourism by informing tourists who’d already arrived that, yes, you could eat and drink in New York, and visit unspecified “attractions,” and fill your days with delight by accessing an I ♥ NY app.

We didn’t know whether to laugh or kick something last month when we read in The New York Times that the remaining billboards from this boneheaded campaign — more than 500 of them still flank state highways — had cost taxpayers about $15,000 apiece . . . and the Federal Highway Administration was insisting they were illegal and had to go: “The hundreds of big blue ‘I ♥ NY’ signs that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo had installed beside the state’s highways have cost more than $8 million,” The Times reported. “New York was given until Sept. 30 to bring the signage into compliance, or face a $14 million cut in federal funding for its roads and highways.”

The governor, who was quoted elsewhere as calling his pet-project signs “a tremendous success,” continued for a few weeks to insist they were fantastic before crying uncle. The New York State Department of Transportation announced that all the signs would either be reworked or taken down, their materials repurposed to reduce the material waste of this already wildly wasteful interlude.

Our thoughts now turn to the county and state-sponsored signage on our roadsides here in East Hampton. It has, we think, gotten out of hand. (How many times does a driver need to be alerted to the location of Cedar Point Park?) The “Litter Removal Next 1 Mile” signs alongside Montauk Highway are the worst. For starters, they’re not fooling anyone: Volunteer anti-trash activists pick up more garbage than the government crews funded by corporate sponsorship. These litter-removal signs are terrific advertising for the sponsors — making it look like Town Pond is the domain of Morgan Stanley and Woods Lane is affiliated with an “accounting and success consultancy” firm from Oyster Bay — but they’re not doing much for the rest of us. Who do we have to complain to to get them gone?

East Hampton Town needs a summer plan. Relatively recently, officials presented a set of hamlet-specific vision documents intended to guide redevelopment and new projects in the commercial centers with an eye toward a mix of business and residential needs and an emphasis on affordable living for workers. These studies were quite nice and contained some exciting ideas. What the hamlet plan authors did not do was look at the reality of East Hampton’s resort, day-trip, and short-term rental economy in a coherent way. As good as the study was, without acknowledging the transformations the town has undergone and offering some direction for the future, the work was only half done. Time is of the essence.

The reality is that East Hampton has changed from a mostly quiet place with summer rentals into a destination complete with a handful of reality-TV shows and a multitude of boldface names. Shoppers pour in to browse the village’s Main Street boutiques, most run by out-of-town companies that give nothing back to the community. Montauk draws thousands on sunny weekends for the beaches, fishing, and nightlife. Airbnb and other unregulated rental services bring in hundreds, if not an even greater number of visitors. As a result, roads, essential services, public spaces, and the general quality of life are affected negatively. And almost all of this is based on long-ago zoning decisions while officials went far too easy on violations, calling them in the obfuscating parlance of officialdom, pre-existing, nonconforming uses.

Now, having been either unwilling or unable to stem the flood, town officials are seeking to accommodate it, planning a costly sewage system for parts of Montauk, for starters, which will help lock in permanently the mistakes now in place. The authors of the hamlet studies more or less averted their gazes, proposing traffic circles and portable houses to deal with the influx but never trying to identify and deal with the root causes. It was not their fault, though, as direction comes from the top, in this case the well-meaning, if shortsighted, town board that commissioned the analyses. Remember, this was for the most part the same group that greenlighted the sandbagging of the Montauk beach, breaking the law in the process.

The lack of a long-term plan to deal with the summer hordes also comes down to residents, who for the most part have not spoken out as a whole about the changes to East Hampton wrought by its international renown. Until enough taxpayers raise their voices to say they want their town back, nothing is going to change. In fact, given the corporate money now backing many commercial projects, things could get a whole lot worse.

For lack of a better word, East Hampton needs a tourism master plan, which should be produced in conjunction with the Villages of East Hampton and Sag Harbor. This would address current conditions, including the maximum number of seasonal visitors possible under present rules, as well as the number that actually would be ideal. Considering development of the commercial centers in the absence of an overarching vision is a guarantee of failure.

A proposal to pave the eastern parking area at Ditch Plain in Montauk brought an outpouring of emotion to East Hampton’s Town Hall on Tuesday. Surfers and others who enjoy the ambience of the rutted, gravel-and-sand patch known as Dirt Lot were vigorous in opposition. But officials are in a bind: Conditions there at peak times are unacceptable. 

When the surf is good, notably during hurricane season, Dirt Lot and its entry road are lined with vehicles parked every which way because there are no markings or directional signs. Late arrivals queue up all the way to DeForest Road, making quick access for police or emergency medical personnel almost impossible. If this section of beach is to remain open to the public, this cannot be allowed to continue. Public safety must be the town’s top priority, followed by environmental considerations.

Many residents and nonresident parking permit holders would like to see Dirt Lot remain as it is, but that is just not possible given its heavy use in season. Closing it off to vehicles and allowing the site to revert to nature would not be an alternative because that would put too much pressure on the remaining Ditch parking lots. One approach would be for the town to widen the Dirt Lot entry and designate an emergency lane with semipermanent flexible bollards. 

But the big question is whether all three parking lots at Ditch should be limited to resident permit holders on summer weekends, as has been done elsewhere. No data collection, to our knowledge, has been made to support this one way or the other, but anecdotally, the impact of residents-only parking at Indian Wells in Amagansett has been positive. At Ditch, this is an idea whose time may have come.

Among other steps the town should take to bring order to the Ditch madness is banning group surfing lessons and parking of associated surf camp support vehicles. These entities have improperly used resident parking permits to run for-profit enterprises on public property. Limiting lessons to perhaps two students at a time would also help reduce the chance of injury in the water.

In looking at all three Ditch Plain lots as a whole, the town is beginning necessary work toward a safe and better-functioning arrangement. Changes must be made, but deciding on a high-season problem during the month of March is unlikely to produce satisfactory results. Our advice is for the town to test a solution without paving Dirt Lot now and carefully monitor conditions this summer to develop a long-lasting solution.

Enthusiasm among many on the left on eastern Long Island about taking the congressional seat now held by Representative Lee Zeldin notwithstanding, Democrats in the First Congressional District remain underdogs. Both CNN and the Cook Political Report recently rated his seat likely to remain Republican, considering the candidates’ fund-raising, election history, and registration data. This means the Democratic opposition must take swift action if it hopes to oust an incumbent whose position appears secure.

Momentum may be shifting nationally toward a Democratic landslide in the midterm elections but that is not necessarily the case in the First Congressional District, which includes the Towns of East Hampton, Southampton, Shelter Island, Southold, Riverhead, Brookhaven, and most of Smithtown. 

According to the New York State Board of Elections, there are substantially more Republicans registered in the district, and, when Conservative Party voters are included, the pluses for Mr. Zeldin are even greater. In 2016, when facing Anna Throne-Holst, he was lifted by some 23,000 Conservative votes and cruised to victory. When he defeated Representative Tim Bishop in 2014 the story was much the same. 

Democrats may not care for Mr. Zeldin, but he has proven a formidable vote-getter with a strong publicity machine behind him and multiple talking-head appearances on Fox News. The fact that he has been a strong supporter of a deeply unpopular president may not be enough to upset Mr. Zeldin’s demonstrated ability to win elections. 

Provided President Trump is still in office in November, which is not a sure thing, excitement among Democrats and fatigue among some Republicans make this off-year election hard to predict. When Mr. Zeldin defeated Mr. Bishop in 2014, he did so with only about 77,000 votes. Two years later, when Mr. Trump won in the First Congressional District by nine points, Mr. Zeldin had the support of more than 158,000 voters, more than there are registered Democrats in the entire district. 

What this means for those hoping to give Mr. Zeldin a swift kick toward a well-earned private-sector career and help the country restore order and respect for the rule of law and this country’s partnerships abroad, is that the focus must be on increasing voter participation by a significant margin, not just on who the nominee will be. And in this, the party as a whole needs to show more initiative. 

Registering voters is the first step. This should include New Yorkers with houses on the North and South Forks who are eligible to vote here but historically have not. New York State makes it easy to change one’s registration in person and via the mail. First-time voters, especially the young and members of immigrant communities, must be reached as well.

Antipathy for President Trump alone will not be enough to get a First District Democrat to Washington. An aggressive ground game to build turnout will have to be won first — from Montauk all the way to Smithtown.

A new, recently released study of Georgica Pond’s water quality contains a big surprise. Bacteria tests conducted by the Surfrider Foundation and Chris Gobler’s Stony Brook Southampton laboratory, paid for by the Friends of Georgica Pond, have for some time shown elevated fecal bacteria levels, especially after heavy rain. Now, thanks to further work by Dr. Gobler and several colleagues, a culprit, if not the source, has been identified: dogs.

Bacteria DNA in water samples taken between May and November were analyzed and the results were a shocker. Human waste accounted for less than 5 percent of the total, while dogs were responsible for about 67 percent. The rest came from birds and deer. 

Where the dog bacteria were highest is curious, too. According to a report prepared by the Gobler lab, Talmage Creek, which skirts the Montauk Highway rest area near Wainscott Stone Road, indicated the greatest amount, followed by Georgica Cove. The report surmises that people walking their pets in the rest area could account for the high numbers, but it notes that stormwater that drains from considerable distances is a likely factor as well. Intercepting road runoff before it can reach the pond should improve things, the report concludes.

Bacteria are just one aspect of water quality, of course. East Hampton Town recently imposed a requirement that the wastewater systems in all new construction be nitrogen-reducing. Other pressures on the pond’s ecosystem include lawn and landscape products, acidification due to climate change, fossil fuels, and, potentially, even trace amounts of pharmaceutical drugs.

It is noteworthy that the Georgica bacteria studies are for the most part projects of nongovernmental groups. This brings to mind the work being done by Concerned Citizens of Montauk. East Hampton Town, for all its official enthusiasm for as yet unproven nitrogen-reduction systems, has lagged when it comes to getting the data necessary for designing effective remediation. Much more must be done if the waterways are to be restored and protected over the long term. 

Though readers might find it amusing that dog poop is implicated in this case, it is important information. The Friends of Georgica Pond, the Surfrider Long Island Chapter, and the Gobler lab are doing good work. They deserve the community’s thanks — and a swift response from state and local authorities.

Visitors to the East End often giggle when someone mentions the Ladies Village Improvement Society in casual conversation. Sounds like a flashback to prewar Britain: Do the ladies specialize in marmalade boiling, bootie knitting, and the singing of patriotic songs? Of course you, dear reader, know better: East Hampton’s L.V.I.S. is a mighty institution that has for 123 years and counting represented the best of what a volunteer civic organization can be.

 In some ways, the L.V.I.S. functions as almost a shadow cabinet in the Village of East Hampton, swaying — in our view, almost entirely for the better — official government decisions on issues that have shaped not just appearances but the preservation of both its physical landscape and traditions. (Don’t believe it? Take a moment to Google how the village got its historic districts.)

In news that might sound less than momentous to those who like to chuckle about ladies’ organizations, the L.V.I.S. swung open the doors of its Bargain Box and Books thrift shop last week after a sparkling, extensive renovation. Here at the Star office, this was a Big Day. We have been among the Bargain Box’s most enthusiastic bargain-hunters since Ye Olde Days of the 1970s and ’80s, when Frank, the longtime friendly manager, presided over the upstairs-downstairs jumble at its earlier shopfront, farther north on Main Street (next to Pets Painted With Love). 

In recent years, we have been somewhat saddened about the closing of the children’s department and the raising of prices at “the Box,” and we feel it necessary to say that we hope the L.V.I.S.’s marvelous volunteers will remember those families in our community who might not be able to afford boutique prices and might not have other places to buy inexpensive clothes that are well made. But that aside, we have nothing but hosannas to shout in praise of the very smart-looking new renovation, and the mission of the organization and its retail arm. We are told that the Box can bring in many thousands of dollars in a given month to support the group’s mission of preservation, education, and, yes, beautification. Hats off to you, L.V.I.S.! Long may you rule.

The National Aeronautic and Space Administration reports that all but one of the 16 hottest years in its 134-year-long record have occurred since 2000. The data underscore the truth about global warming, and that some of the world’s most vulnerable populations already are suffering.

Here on eastern Long Island we might take comfort that global warming has not changed the first day of spring, at least on the calendar, which old-timers knew as Fish Hawk Day. Let’s watch for the magnificent osprey’s return on Tuesday, if not sooner — and celebrate.