Oil shocks come quickly, not giving people time to plan for oil substitutes. There won't be time to plant energy crops and wait around ten years for them to grow. There will hardly be time to wait for the ethanol plants to be constructed.

So here's how the next oil shock might play out in the woods: After the short-term rationing and associated chaos, we'll see ethanol plants under construction everywhere except in the deserts. But while they're being built, much wood will be cut for home heating and for hastily converted oil-fired power plants. Government forestry agencies will make TV ads and booklets extolling the virtues of clearcutting for energy supplies and wildlife. They'll also tell us that our forests are biologically over-mature and in need of "rejuvenation."

Foresters and loggers will probably get extra fuel rations. If the situation gets really bad, they might be conscripted in some fashion to serve the national interests by "producing" more cellulose feedstocks to feed the ethanol plants. Landowners may see their forests condemned by the state for the same purpose. Of course the government would turn over appropriated lands to Exxon-Mobil-BP-Texaco for actual "management" of the biomass resource.

On the positive side, we'll finally get mandatory paper recycling because most of the pulpwood needed for making paper will now go for ethanol. We'll see public money spent on public transportation. There will be lots more bicycles and power-assisted bicycles on the road. Fuel cells will be specially designed to run on ethanol. There will be national campaigns for people to go vegetarian so that land devoted to pasturage and grain production for livestock can be converted to energy crops.

Prices for photovoltaic (PV) panels will come down and will be installed on many roofs. Large PV arrays will be installed in sunny, desert areas. Windmill farms will pop up wherever there's enough steady wind. If huge efforts are made in energy efficiency at the same time, there might be enough solar and wind electricity to satisfy most residential and commercial demand. Industrial demand will be another matter.

Meanwhile, forests will keep disappearing into the maws of chippers for ethanol feedstock production. Then at some point it will become clear that we face a critical choice: our forests or our cars? It will still be years before all the energy crop plantings will be ready to harvest. For most people this will be a very difficult choice. Oil and car company propaganda won't make matters easier.

We can only hope that Gaia won't get too perturbed with all this, plus all our other crimes against her, and just decide to shut us all down by means of massive forest fires, insect infestations, diseases and diebacks induced by climate change. We'll have to hope that the same fate doesn't befall the energy crops. And we'll have to hope that we don't get a climate "flip-flop" back towards glacial conditions just when we're busy at adapting to life without fossil fuels. The timing would be just too much.