Artificial protein in the Capitalocene: Blade Runner 2049

This article approaches the alternative protein transition by noting with the EAT-Lancet Commission that the existing world-food-system is a main driver of global warming. Building on eco-feminist and eco-Marxist critiques of the world-food-system, the article notes how this system organizes not only agriculture, animal husbandry, logistics, diets, and markets across the planet, but also profoundly unjust social relationships. As the article observes, this state of affairs has been mapped by sociology and environmental history, but it is also a central concern to science fiction and climate fiction. The article adds to work on such texts by analysing Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049 , a dystopian film that envisions a socially stratified future where the long history of extractive capitalism has led to the death of most non-human life. Thus, protein and other essential nutrients must be manufactured in vitro, and a shortage of labour has given birth to a new type of human life also grown in laboratories. The article argues that the film explores the border that separates artificially produced protein from conventional types and, in doing so, maps the worlds that may ensue if the transition to new types of protein is made to serve the same system as that which created the existing world-food-system. The article argues that the film comments on the alternative protein transition by depicting a future where this transition has served the needs of the capitalist world-food-system rather than the Earth system, but also by envisioning protein futures beyond the extractive violence that is destroying land and people in the present.