With the naming of A.J. McGuire to lead the Sag Harbor Police Department, the village’s board of trustees has effectively put to an end to any question about the force’s future. It was not all that long ago that some of the elected officials in the Municipal Building questioned whether Sag Harbor should continue to have its own police at all. 

Lieutenant McGuire is a well-regarded member of the East Hampton Town Police Department and, though he will be missed, he is parting on good terms with his colleagues. East Hampton’s loss is Sag Harbor’s gain. It is expected that a working relationship between the departments will continue under Mr. McGuire’s leadership. More important is that Sag Harbor will have its own, homegrown force, especially in the summer months when resident and visitor numbers soar. By hindsight, the notion that Sag Harbor’s peak-season policing could have been equally well managed by patrols from one of the neighboring departments seems imprudent. 

As the South Fork’s most densely populated community for part of the year — a de facto urban area — Sag Harbor needs its own police force. Much praise is due the village board for recognizing this, and settling on someone who is by all accounts able to lead it.

“It’s almost Thanksgiving. Donate something.” That’s what a Star editorial staff member suggested as an idea for this page this week. So we took a short walk around the office, asking, “If you had $100 right now to give to charity, where would you send it?” Answers were easy to come by and showed a surprising range.

Given the Syrian refugee crisis, as well as the work of one of our contributing photographers in Greece, help for the migrants’ children was among the first things to spring to mind, as was support for getting medical supplies to where they are needed in Greece. Aid to groups helping children crossing the southern border of the United States also was mentioned. Other suggestions included Doctors Without Borders, school-construction efforts in Tibet, Amnesty International, potable water in developing countries, Alzheimer’s disease research, and marine mammal conservation.

Close to home, contributions were recommended to the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons, the Retreat shelter for domestic violence victims and their families, the Group for the East End, Peconic Land Trust, Habitat for Humanity, East End Hospice, and any of the food pantries.

Given the relatively small sample of those who were at 153 Main Street at around lunchtime on Tuesday, the breadth of the list is notable. What can be gleaned is that because so many organizations are doing good work it might not matter to which you give. Our advice? Donate something to one you care about, but donate something.

As attention continues to be focused on the Army Corps project on the Montauk beach, it is vital that the far more encompassing problem of sea level rise gets attention. 

Recent news about the Greenland ice sheet is an alarming warning. According to recent data, glaciers in its cold and dry north long thought to be stable are changing, and the shift could have dire implications for the world’s coastal communities — like East Hampton. Just two of these glaciers hold enough frozen water to raise global sea levels by three and a half feet. 

If 3.5 feet does not sound like much to you, consider that researchers believe that the natural landward shift of shoreline is at least 1 to 10 feet. That might mean for eastern Long Island that a single foot of sea level rise would push the dunes and estuary edges back about 10 feet, or, if those Greenland glaciers were to entirely break loose, roughly 35 feet of potential shoreline loss. And some coastal geologists have put the recession figure for sand beaches at a frightening 150 times the rate of sea level rise. This is a massive crisis for the East End, but almost no authority is showing any sign of adequate response.

The 14,500-sandbag seawall that the East Hampton Town Board recently vowed to see through to completion will cover only a tiny portion of East Hampton’s roughly 70 miles of shoreline. In the long term, as erosion is only predicted to accelerate, a gradual, managed retreat from the coast will be the only option.

Earlier this year the town board appointed a committee to map out a path to coastal resiliency, using a $250,000 state grant. The members are a mix of town staffers, elected officials, and representative of public and private agencies. It is a start, but to be really successful, the Coastal Assessment Resiliency Plan committee will have to accomplish at least two things: hire top-flight experts to guide the process and then convince local, state, and county regulators to follow their recommendations to the letter.

Although nine years of work went into the town’s Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan, it was essentially tossed in the waste bin when it came to the Montauk Army Corps project. This should give the opponents of the Corps project a very real reason to doubt that the town’s new resiliency committee’s effort will amount to much. The critics would be happy to be proven wrong, of course, but considering that the powers-that-be are the same people responsible for the looming Montauk disaster, it will take a great deal to convince them that anyone is on the right course.

What is happening now in Greenland should be a wake-up call both locally and for leaders in Washington. Is anyone listening?

New York State has released a first-draft plan for considering sea level rise. But for all the effort, and a self-congratulatory public relations flurry, there is little promise of improving coastal policy. This is a regrettable failure.

The problem is this: Though the overwhelming evidence is that sea level is creeping upward, threatening low-lying and beachfront areas, government officials from New York’s villages to the state capital have been unable, or unwilling, to respond in ways that matter. East Hampton’s project to sandbag the downtown Montauk ocean beach, consistently opposed by independent experts, is a case in point. So, too, is the entire region’s continued expansion of development in the danger zones.

Three years after Hurricane Sandy and decades after warnings were issued, the state is only now getting around to making official predictions about how high the water is expected to go. But the state is not taking the next logical step of imposing new construction standards and changing permit requirements. Instead, Albany is handing responsibility down the line to those who might or might not be able to incorporate the predictions into routine decision-making.

The Montauk Army Corps effort was to a large degree the product of a misrepresentation by the previous town supervisor, Bill Wilkinson, who claimed Sandy was to blame for ongoing erosion. Those who followed him in Town Hall were hamstrung: Had they blocked the work and some of the motels begun to fall, the responsibility would have been theirs.

The East Hampton Town Board recently named a coastal resiliency committee to study the issue and make policy recommendations. The obvious risk is that whatever the committee comes up with will be left to elected officials to enact. Consideration should be given to changing the way shoreline projects are evaluated, especially in East Hampton Town. It might be better to give erosion-control project review to the town planning board, whose members’ seven-year terms are supposed to insulate them from politics. Free from fear of being turned out of office, planning board members might indeed be more likely to make the most difficult decisions.

Whatever the solution, it is clear that local governments cannot by themselves meet the political and emotional challenges of saying no to certain waterfront property owners and beginning a program of managed retreat. Albany’s estimate of how bad the problem will be for shore areas is a start, but falls short. Without real guidance from the top, business will continue as usual along the coast, with slow-moving disaster the most likely outcome.

Now that the East Hampton Town Board has a problem on its hands of a long queue of people willing to be arrested in protest of the Army Corps of Engineers’ project in Montauk as well as some 250 others who pressed the matter at a meeting on Tuesday, the question is where the town can go from here. But it is even more important to consider whether coastal policy all the way from Town Hall to Albany and Capitol Hill must be overhauled.

Several local figures who sought money for the sandbag seawall, including former Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and his then-allies on the town board, have remained out of the limelight although they more or less handed those who followed them into Town Hall a done deal.

However, the final responsibility for what is going on rests entirely with the current board, which signed off on the project and helped negotiate necessary access agreements with adjacent property owners. To be charitable, perhaps they, like many of the past days’ protestors, could not envision what the project would actually look like until the bulldozers rolled.

Up to last week, only a handful of individuals and just one organization, Defend H20, were on what we see as the right side, arguing against the seawall and pushing for a sensible, long-term program of moving endangered businesses and residences away from the shore — or condemning them and building a resilient dune in their places.

Supervisor Larry Cantwell and the rest of the town board had a chance early on to apply the brakes but chose not to. Perhaps they, like the project’s individual supporters and the Montauk Chamber of Commerce, allowed themselves to be conned by the idea of a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow in the form of millions of federal dollars to be spent here as part of the Army Corps’s Fire-Island-to-Montauk study. They should have known better: Destroying a beach and setting aside years of environmental regulation on the mere wisp of a promise of cash from Washington was outrageous.

As we have argued before, local governments, as well as the State of New York, are doomed when it comes to managing a rapidly changing coast unless a major change of policy occurs. The Army Corps, with its single-headed focus on preserving property, is the wrong agency for the task. Change must come from the very top after a frank national conversation about how sea level rise and storm risk is going to be dealt with, and by whom.

What is happening today on the Montauk beach makes it clear that the current regulatory structure is a failure, and that new, more far-sighted leadership will have to come from Washington.

Among the pleasures of the East End are its clear skies and the notable absence of man-made lighting to spoil the view. East Hampton Village has taken this to heart — though some of its own municipal lighting could be better — and is working on new regulations, which, apparently, will conform to Dark Skies Association standards. In East Hampton Town, however, officials have tightened the rules but have not shown diligence in seeking compliance with the statute. And in both jurisdictions, reasonable efforts to expand protections of the darkness of the night have been met with notable opposition — mostly from commercial interests. Our take is that this is a battle worth engaging in.

In East Hampton Town, especially in Montauk, the puzzling and ongoing question is why the law against “internally illuminated” signs (think neon and LEDs) and other kinds of offending lighting is only rarely enforced. The prohibitions are unambiguous, which should make the jobs of officials seeking compliance easy, but little is done. The East Hampton Town Board might be thinking that it is doing some in the business community a favor by going easy in this regard, but in doing so it is sending a loud and clear signal that the town code can be read with a wink and a nod. If the board thinks certain aspects of the lighting rules are outdated, it should change the law. As it is, however, every bright blinking “open” sign carries an unintended message that undermines the authority of local law and gives some residents the confidence to try pushing other limits. One has to wonder just how big an illegal, light-up sign someone would have to put up to get Town Hall’s attention. Pretty darn big, unfortunately.

Officials across the region must be continually reminded that their primary responsibility is to resident taxpayers, who we think like the night to look like night. Commercial interests must come second. This also applies to the battle over the Army Corps project in Montauk. People want the beach; a handful of motels and seasonal residents seek protection for their structures. This tension is more or less the same when it comes to lighting. Officials should listen politely to any voices that would like to push back the dark with light, but then defer to the rest of us, who enjoy seeing the stars overhead, as well as to the native plants and animals for which normal day and night cycles are essential.

In this and so many other matters, the question should be what needs to be done to protect this place and those qualities that make it unique. It is a big job, but for elected officials, there is no higher priority.

As panic grips some segments of America over the idea of allowing Syrian or other Middle Eastern refugees to settle in the United States, a few simple observations should be kept in mind. The statistics show, notably, that the risk of a terrorist being among those who pass through the rigorous vetting already in place is extremely low. 

According to research published recently by the Cato Institute, since 2001, not one of the 859,629 refugees admitted to the United States has carried out a terrorist attack. By comparison, 1 in 22,541 Americans committed a murder last year alone, according to the institute. 

U.S. politicians are big on finding imaginary threats to rail against. Witness the many governors who announced their desire to block refugees from their states, which prompted the House of Representatives to double down, passing an anti-refugee bill. Given the Cato numbers, it would be pretty easy later to claim victory over this made-up boogeyman. But America’s leaders have so far failed to find their voices about all the actual violence . . . or any solutions.

The South Fork could, within just a few years, see a significant amount of its electricity generated by offshore windmills. Potentially, this is good news for reducing the carbon emissions associated with global warming as well as other forms of atmospheric pollution. But it is far from a sure thing.

Consumption of electricity on the South Fork is expected to continue to grow, outpacing population increases, with most of the demand — as much as 60 percent — coming from residential summertime air-conditioning. If there are no new local sources, new high-voltage transmission lines would be required. Considering the controversy last time new lines were run in East Hampton, the power company might have good reason, beyond cost savings and the environment, to seek alternatives.

Several companies, including Deepwater Wind, have submitted proposals to the Long Island Power Authority and PSEG Long Island for generation and load-reduction projects. Deepwater would put windmills about 30 miles southeast of Montauk, which would be connected to two battery facilities, one in Montauk, the other in Wainscott. Other proposals also are pending to help PSEG meet peak power demands; Deepwater is just the first to make its bid public.

In supporting letters to LIPA and PSEG, an ad-hoc consortium of environmental and civic organizations has strongly argued for offshore wind power. Sustainable projects like Deepwater’s, it said, would ensure reliable, clean energy without requiring new, dirty, and expensive fossil-fuel plants. This is a compelling argument. The very real threat of rising sea level caused by climate change should put “green” electricity at the top of the selection process as bids are considered.

As world leaders meet in Paris this week to try to agree on a meaningful strategy to combat global warming, those of us who live on the East End should pay close attention. Eastern Long Island is especially vulnerable to sea level rise, one of the byproducts of a hotter planet. Current and future officials will face budget-busting challenges in the years ahead, as well as painful choices about whether to protect private property at the expense of common assets such as the region’s beaches and public waterfronts.

The conspiracy enthusiasts and lonely Internet prognosticators who insist the science behind the crisis is wrong are not to be taken seriously. The vast majority of expert opinion is consistent and daunting. In fact, the language used to describe the predictable effects of climate change is increasingly blunt. 

Even if the Paris talks were successful in holding warming to 6 degrees Fahrenheit, Coral Davenport, who covers climate change for The New York Times, observed, “Scientists say that that level of warming is still likely to cause food shortages and widespread extinctions of plant and animal life.” But even 6 degrees would be regarded as positive since current trends would push the planet’s increase to a “far more destructive temperature increase of more than 8 degrees Fahrenheit.”

Certainly there are individual, government, and corporate steps that should be taken. Individuals can choose electric and hybrid vehicles to eliminate tailpipe emissions. Households and businesses can reduce consumption of fossil fuels. East Hampton Town has set a 100-percent renewable energy goal for 2030. It has also sought to promote large-scale solar power facilities on two town-owned sites. And yet the reality is that greater steps will be required, and this will take national leadership.

It is quite shocking that the United States negotiators in Paris have conceded that there would be no way to get a two-thirds majority in the Republican-controlled Senate for a climate treaty. Instead, they hope to set voluntary goals. Meanwhile, Republicans in the House of Representatives are trying to block several of President Obama’s measures to curb domestic carbon emissions. 

New York’s senators, Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer, both Democrats, could reliably be expected to vote in favor of a climate deal. As for Representative Lee Zeldin, however, there is reason to doubt his commitment to turning the tide even though his congressional district is among those most likely to see severe flooding, erosion, and coastal inundation as a result of sea level rise. “I’m not sold yet on the whole argument that we have as serious a problem with climate change as other people,” he told Newsday last year. This is not only wrong, it is dangerous.

Then, too, looking at what is being said in the run-up to the Republican presidential primary, there is little hope of anything approaching a national consensus on climate change. This is a shame because divisions within the United States diminish the prospects for a successful outcome in Paris. 

With Mr. Zeldin irrationally questioning the science and with New York’s senators’ positions more or less assured, to be effective on a larger scale, East End residents must use their voices — and perhaps dollars — to try to move public opinion. It is in both our local interest and that of the planet on which we live.

Support for outside commercial interests over home rule and the promise of meaningful noise control is a red line that candidates for East Hampton Town elected office should not cross. But Tom Knobel, Margaret Turner, and Lisa Mulhern-Larsen have been willing to finance their supervisor and town board campaigns largely with money from businesses and individuals seeking to block tough new aircraft limits.

By the most recent count, HeliFlite and related individuals, as well as a handful of pilots and airport businesses, have provided the Republicans with $115,000. It is difficult to see this as evidence of anything except a quid pro quo. However, Mr. Knobel, who is seeking the supervisor’s post, argued that the largess was only because the helicopter companies and others see him as having an “open mind.” We doubt voters are as credulous as Mr. Knobel might wish.

It is regrettable that the once-proud East Hampton Republican Party has come to this, taking money from outsiders who would put their corporate well-being ahead of the wishes of thousands of East Hampton residents for peace and quiet.

The Republican candidates may say what they will about all the other town issues and their qualifications for office, but by being financed almost entirely by airport-related donors, they have shown themselves sorely lacking in judgment and unfit for leadership. On the airport issue alone, Mr. Knobel, Ms. Turner, and Ms. Mulhern-Larsen are not likely to see wide support.

There is still time before Election Day for them to give back the tainted money and work to repair the damage, but not much. Voters should be watching closely in the campaign’s final days.