As much as it makes my skin crawl to say this, let us assume that Jensen’s vision of the idyllic future of hunter/gatherer subsistence for the chosen few, arriving as a consequence of the active destruction of civilisation, is somehow confirmed as viable, how do we get there? Before I address that, let’s look at the initial assumption. It is predicated on the notion that such cultures existed and thrived in the past (to which I would point out that yes, they existed, and might even be seen to have thrived, indeed for a very long time, but that life in that system was far from idyllic; one need only look at the paleo-forensic evidence to see the signs of stress, injury, periods of deprivation and malnutrition, and endemic diseases and parasitic invasion, to know that life was hard and plagued with suffering and misery. And as soon as strategies arrived that had the potential to mitigate that difficult existence, those who could jumped at them). Whether such an idyllic existence existed in the past is, however, not really the point. The point is, and this is what Jensen is precisely addressing, how do we return to it, given the planet’s present condition?
The answer is, we can’t. We have long since passed the point of no return. Let us now look at the possible scenarios to reaching Jensen’s goal (and this goal is born of the heartfelt desire to save the wild animals of the world). In the broadest sense, there are two. Both are dependent on a radical depopulation of the human species, down to perhaps one or two percent of the present population. The distinction lies in how we get there, and it is in that distinction on which everything hinges.
Hunter-Gatherers need something to hunt and something to gather. Without them, the hunter-gatherer starves. Accordingly, for that last one or two percent of humanity left after the fall of civilisation, there needs to be enough animals left to hunt and eat; and there needs to be abundant edible plants to harvest and maintain. Having one and not the other is of course possible, as with the traditional Inuit or strictly vegetarian cultures (not that many of those ever truly existed), but these were very specific in their characteristics. And for the populations in question, biological adaptation was a crucial factor in survival. Finally, the biome being exploited was in each instance fecund enough to sustain viable (if small) populations, all other things being equal (i.e. the presence of ice).
What will those hardy survivors of civilization’s end eat? The answer to that depends on how the other ninety-eight percent died; more specifically, on how quickly they died. If civilisation falls with minimal loss of life, or if it crumbles over a matter of a few years or even a decade or so, then we are looking at six billion very hungry people. What will they eat when the last stockpiles of processed food are gone? Why, they will eat everything (a present-day corollary can be found in the Congo, where civilization has already collapsed). They’ll start with the best stuff first: every animal wild and domestic they can track down and slaughter. Once those are all gone, they’ll turn to lesser creatures—those more difficult to capture or of little or no nutritional value. And finally, when they too are all gone, when every forest is silent, when the skies are truly empty, they will turn to the last source of food available to them: each other.
This scenario, of slow or gradual collapse, will in fact trigger an absolute extinction of every wild and domestic animal on Earth, concluding with us.