When you have a hard time keeping your story straight, you’re bound to let the truth slip sooner or later.

That’s what’s happened to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The EPA is asking the courts to pause lawsuits challenging the California-led phase-out of diesel freight trucks until judges rule whether mandating electric passenger cars and light pickups is lawful.

Five lawsuits opposing an EPA-approved rule that will culminate in California, Washington and other states banning new diesel heavy-duty trucks in 2036 are pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

In September the court heard arguments on whether California and EPA rules are illegally forcing U.S. motorists into zero-emission light-duty vehicles to fight climate change.

The court hasn’t ruled on either Ohio v. EPA, challenging California’s car rule, or Texas v. EPA, challenging the Biden administration’s vehicle-emission standards for cars and pickups.

Those cases could decide the truck-related lawsuits, which are in their early stages, according to a motion filed last month by the EPA.

Makes sense. If the court says EPA can’t let California regulate cars, it stands to reason it can’t allow it to regulate trucks.

EPA has allowed California to set its own emissions standards as a backdoor way to achieve strict nationwide regulations Congress would never let the agency impose.

With its outsized market power, California policy drives automakers to engineer vehicles to meet the standards. As other states adopt California’s rules manufacturers have no choice but to comply. That produces a national standard by default.

The EPA says that California’s emissions standards are a pathway to an “all electric” future that is favored by the Biden administration.

The whole idea is to reduce greenhouse gases that activists say cause climate change by eliminating fossil fuels in transportation.

As part of their arguments against allowing California to be their de facto regulator, Texas and other states say that California’s standard will cost them tax money by reducing demand for oil produced in their states.

Not so, says the EPA.

“Because of world demand for oil, the net amount of oil extracted in the petitioning states — and their tax revenues — will not necessarily decrease as a result of this rule,” the EPA stated in court papers.

So, when the United States stops using oil to power its cars and trucks, net oil production won’t go down because other countries will buy and use it.

That’s what the U.S. Energy Information Administration has predicted.

The EIA in October said that global greenhouse gases will increase by 15% by 2050 as the population grows and people become wealthier and consume more energy.

All this while current policy would have the U.S. become a net zero emitter by then.

Last week U.S. auto dealers wrote the president complaining their lots are filled with electric vehicles that people won’t buy because they are more expensive and less reliable than conventional vehicles, and the charging infrastructure is woefully inadequate.

No worries. California will put buyers in EVs whether they want them or not, and the EPA will send U.S. oil to motorists in other countries.