As usual with biennial municipal elections, a small minority of the usual voters decided the outcome of last week's contests after campaigns largely waged on the usual topics: town budgets, school budgets, services and personalities. In only a few towns did the overriding issue that faces everyone, especially coastal communities, get much mention: climate change and its effects on temperature, sea levels and weather.

That is not to say that local commissions and officials have been ignoring the matter. Groton, East Lyme, Stonington and New London are among the Connecticut municipalities systematically addressing vulnerability and sustainability. Rather, people running for local office sense that voters are going to make their decisions on the tried-and-true domestic issues, if they vote at all.

That must change. Voters and all residents have to immediately widen their vision of what is needed for a safe and sustainable community, and newly elected officials must take the lead.

While Connecticut was holding local elections, a global Convening of the Parties to climate change concerns got started in Glasgow, Scotland. On the far side of "the pond" — the Atlantic Ocean — the COP26 meeting discussed rising sea levels that will affect their shores and our own; saving carbon-filtering forests; and a resolution to reduce release of methane gases. Some — not the U.S. — have signed on to ending dependence on coal.

Representatives of more than 100 nations at COP26 made a few key breakthroughs in international cooperation and even found slender signs of hope that rising temperatures and their effects can be slowed a bit. Yet each problem is so vast it prompts hopelessness or information overload. Either reaction overlooks what must take place where people live, at the other end of the governmental spectrum — towns and cities.

Lest we forget it, layers of governmental and public-private cooperation tackled the Covid-19 pandemic; there are takeaways from that effort for addressing climate change. Covid, of course, was sprung on us; climate change has been sending ominous signals for decades. Humans tend to react more forcefully to an imminent emergency than a slow rollout of disaster. Southeastern Connecticut, nevertheless, has a history of regional, local and state coordination to address an overweening problem in the successful effort to fight the Pentagon's 2005 plan to close the Groton submarine base.

We trust the region has not forgotten its taste of empowerment from preventing the economic identity crisis base closure would have brought on. As shown in the September report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, some towns learned the lesson of getting organized, and are conducting climate vulnerability assessments and creating action plans for flood plains and shorelines. Groton is making sustainability a working project, largely through coastline protection but also in open space preservation, a priority as well in Stonington. East Lyme is focused simultaneously on open space and resources for safe drinking water. New London is the host city for the state's major wind power initiative.

Connecticut's own Physical Climate Assessment came out in 2019, the same year that anyone re-elected last week was previously elected to office. The planet and New London County are two years further into a future that for this region is predicted to include rising air temperatures, less snow, changes in precipitation levels, a longer growing season and rising sea levels. The state has been working on open space preservation — and thus carbon sequestration by green plants — for even longer, and is now 75 percent along in its goal of preserving 21% of the state as open space by 2023. There is reason for praise — but it is not enough.

Household efforts to waste less, use less, and recycle more help make people mindful of the risks of complacency. But there is a stronger link that can be made between practices at home and global efforts. That is the community, where people can work together for greater effect. Elected leaders must ensure that day-to-day business does not nudge vulnerability and sustainability off their town's agenda.

The Day editorial board meets with political, business and community leaders to formulate editorial viewpoints. It is composed of President and Publisher Timothy Dwyer, Executive Editor Izaskun E. Larraneta, Owen Poole, copy editor, and Lisa McGinley, retired deputy managing editor. The board operates independently from The Day newsroom.