Stringer Plays the Fool

City Comptroller Scott Stringer is plainly worried he’ll come off as too boring to win a mayoral run in 2021 if he just does his job — so he’s decided to play the fool.

We’re looking at the comptroller’s statement Thursday denouncing Con Edison’s request for a rate hike. He’s against it — because the utility supposedly wants the money “so they can funnel more cash into fossil-fuel infrastructure that will dig us deeper into the climate crisis.”

Look: Con Ed has sunk billions into alternative energy, and into efficiency and demand-reduction programs, all to reduce its carbon impact.

Stringer doesn’t want to let Con Ed “bolster the city’s natural-gas network” — even though that’s reducing New York’s carbon profile. The region is still switching from oil heat to much-lower-carbon natural-gas heating, and gas is also a vital source of power to replace the generating capacity lost because politicians have forced the early closure of the carbon-free Indian Point nuclear plant.

Yes, environmental extremists now insist the only way to prevent a climate apocalypse is to try to stop anything and everything that could allow for greater use of any fossil fuel. But that’s ideology, not anything like a practical strategy.

Not when moving the entire United States to carbon-zero won’t get China to stop building new coal plants, or India, the No. 2 global carbon emitter.

For a final pander, the comptroller suggests exploring “the feasibility of a public takeover of New York’s natural-gas system.” Maybe he’d like NYCHA to take charge?