What kind of event is climate change? Theories of events inevitably begin with rupture. An event depends on the experience that the ground has dramatically shifted. Yet the ambiguity of rupture in climate change—which cannot be experienced in any one instance—makes climate change more difficult to emplot. Moreover, it is an event defined as much by how actors see the future unfolding as by its present or past. Tying the theory of events with that of future-making, we focus on three important forms of eventfulness that we find in the current climate change debate: scientific modes of eventfulness, the radical eventfulness of groups such as Extinction Rebellion, and what we call the “sensible” eventfulness of European Union and United Nations functionaries, as it is gleaned from climate change documents such as the European Green Deal. As we show, each form of eventfulness constructs a different temporal landscape, populated by different actors and actions, entailing different stances towards the future and different kinds of projects. Focusing on the tensions within each form, we then show that understanding these forms of eventfulness can also help us understand how different actors fused climate change to other events, such as that of the global Covid-19 epidemic.

气候变化是一种什么样的事件？事件理论不可避免地始于破裂。事件取决于地面发生剧烈变化的经验。然而，气候变化破裂的模棱两可——在任何情况下都无法体验——使得气候变化更难以策划。此外，它是一个由演员如何看待未来发展来定义的事件，就像它的现在或过去一样。将事件理论与未来创造理论联系起来，我们专注于我们在当前气候变化辩论中发现的三种重要的事件性形式：事件性的科学模式、灭绝叛乱等群体的激进事件性，以及我们所说的从欧洲绿色协议等气候变化文件中可以看出，欧盟和联合国工作人员的“明智”多事。正如我们所展示的，每一种形式的多事都会构建一个不同的时间景观，由不同的参与者和行动组成，对未来和不同类型的项目采取不同的立场。然后，我们将重点放在每种形式中的紧张关系上，然后表明，了解这些形式的多事性还可以帮助我们了解不同的参与者如何将气候变化与其他事件融合在一起，例如全球 Covid-19 流行病的事件。