Nobody is pretending that today's wind farms are the result of someone gluing their hand to a road in June 2022 (the fact that you are framing the discussion as

Nobody is pretending that today's wind farms are the result of someone gluing their hand to a road in June 2022 (the fact that you are framing the discussion as if it is the case is not a good start). But it is incorrect to say that it's obvious wind farms would have happened without people doing similar things in their time. Maybe you are too young, but people doing similar things as people gluing their hands today existed way before 2014. You take Hornsea, it is a good example: projects from industry in UK existed for a long time, but were unlocked only due to European Union promotion and subsidies for renewable energy, which itself would not have existed without the need for Germany to boost renewable because they decided to go out of nuclear, because of the ecologist protests in 1980-1990. Hornsea is the result of the 2010 European Union push for 20% renewable, and would not have existed (at least not as early) otherwise, because EU funding was, obviously, a really good incentive. Before that, there were wind power industry pushing for projects in UK (such wind power industry groups exists since 1970), but they were not very often taken on board by the UK government. Also, Hornsea has deemed economically profitable because it used efficient technology created due to the push for renewable that was in general a political move due to pressure of ecologist protests.