Climbing onto roofs is entirely peaceful protest, and I think you have misunderstood what vigilante means. I see no delivery of summary justice in climbing onto a roof.
A peaceful protest must be non-disruptive and not take away from others. Blockading bridges is. It peaceful. It is stealing time, value, and safety from others. They are vigilantes because they claim to be pushing for justice where the law failed them. But in reality their arguments and extreme demands simply have failed to persuade people to the extent they desire through democratic processes. That doesn’t give them the right to blockade bridges in London.
Define "authorities", therein lies the rub. Authority is earned not assumed. If they were authorities the protests would be unnecessary
Regarding your note on authority: it is indeed earned and not assumed - it is encoded in law and in a Democracy, through elections. Certainly the protesters have no authority because they’ve failed to change the law or win elections. These protests amount to them wanting to get undue attention or undue changes because they’ve failed to succeed under the framework of their society.
I've literally never heard of this before. I thought that a peaceful protest was one where violence (ie. assaulting people, destroying property) didn't occur.
It is stealing time and effort from the authorities that has achieved change across history. Sometimes with violence which is obviously no longer peaceful, sometimes not. Police time. Court time. Parliamentary discussion time. In the one year XR have existed, surprisingly the issue has surged in the UK opinion polls - ie more in the UK find the climate crisis an important issue than did before. There has been a much increased level of exposure in the media, and in parliament.
To me, inconvenient though it may be, that is simply democracy working as intended.
An entirely non-disruptive march or demo is, democratically, not a peaceful protest, it's an irrelevance. It's a nice day out and little else, and achieves a similar level of change.
Maybe it's just me, but this kind of childish behavior doesn't make me sympathetic, it engenders the complete opposite effect.
Nothing. At least not the legal rights. They accept the arrest and corresponding consequences. That's what civil disobedience is about.
Is that the case for other activist groups in the past? I was aware that other activist groups have been disruptive also (anti-war protests during vietnam, throwing literal ashes of the dead onto white house grounds during the AIDS crisis, the civil rights movement had plenty of nonviolent and violent protests...)
You know the line, "soap box, ballot box, jury box, ammo box: please use in that order"? Note that last one. Democracy is merely a system wherein the first three boxes have a good chance of fixing whatever issue is occurring. But the ammo box is still there if the issue is important and nothing else works.
I think after that length of time politely explaining with no one listening that you need to kick it up a notch.
The destruction of the environment is aggression against us all - that people have not responded more firmly before now is the surprising part. Democracy depends on the governed if not giving their explicit consent, then at least acknowledging the governing authority, it is not a carte blanche to do whatever in the name of an untested majority.
Not least on a global scale, where most people have no say in most of the destructive acts.
If I were trying to convince someone of my cause, I'd try to couch it so that doing what I wanted would be in the other person's best interest.
Instead I tend to see a playbook of 1.) Make things more difficult. 2.) Make things more expensive. 3.) Lower your quality of life.
Selling asceticism only works for people that already have everything.