Google illegally cut down 250K trees in Finland for data center

GuestFAUniverse

Value of a mature tree is normally several thousand euros here (I don't know about Finland). Multipled by 250K. Times 3 -- a decent factor for illegal acts. Would be a appropriate compensation for Finland.

metalman

a true punnishment for google would be bieng forced to perform a total ecosystem restoration, every bug, worm, critter, plant, and micro organism, cm by cm, trees ,mosses, the whole thing, purchased from indivuals one tiny bit at a time in a way thatcaused zero further damage. minimum cost will be 500 billion dollars and would serve notice on the real value of ecosystems, ie: replacement value

croisillon

related: 183 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50048638 253 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50196837

pjmlp

What was that thing about evil? /s

WarmWash

It's incredible how this story has incessantly made the rounds while the actual story is so incredibly small and insignificant. Like it probably wouldn't even make the town newspaper level insignificant. "A Finnish contractor working for Google failed to get the correct permits for clearing 1.5sq-mi of man made forest that was rezoned to industrial" The actual takeaway is how desperate the media is for clicks. They don't report based on importance, the report based on attention potential (while people naturally assume it's based on importance, as that's the aire the media projects ofc)

genxy

They should make Larry and Sergey replant each one themselves.

sho

Pretty clickbait. No fan of Google, but it sounds like they just jumped the gun slightly on the clearing and it would have been/will be perfectly fine once the permit comes in, which I'm sure it will unless their planning process is totally broken. If you sell Google a great big slice of land to build a DC, I don't think it's very surprising they cut down the trees to build the thing you sold them the land to do. Finland has something like 20 billion trees and plant tens of millions a year for forestry. The bloody country is nothing but trees. 250k isn't nothing but it's hardly the end of the world.

ion_trapper

Does this have to be posted daily?

throw310822

I don't get it, what did they expect when they sold a 3x2km area to Google to build a data center? The space around the town is entirely cultivated land for tens of kms across, hundreds of times the land that they sold to Google- and that land too once had been forest and was felled by the Finns to make space for agriculture. Is anyone outraged about this?

exizt88

Good. Finland has dozens of billions of trees. Having AI data centers on European soil is more important.

semiquaver

The New York post should basically never be used as a source and this article is a great example of why. It is just obviously not journalism as most people would recognize the concept. Everything they post is ragebait, clickbait or both. They are institutionally allergic to any form of nuance. Here is the (much, much higher quality) original reporting that this terrible ny post writeup is based on: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2026/...

atombender

@dang, could we replace the link with this much better article? https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2026/...

designerarvid

First time hearing of number of trees as a measue in forestry. In scandinavia we use hectars (100x100m). There’s also several different m3 measurements (with and without bark), that is used along with timber quality. Finland has trees in billions. Still google should follow the laws and hand in the right permits.

SchemingRabbits

250k trees is a number so big that it is hard to wrap your mind around. Also sucks to think that mature trees take a really long time to grow. For example, Oak trees often live 150 - 300 years.

Kevin_Flynn

1. Government welcomes Google. 2. Google starts construction, fails to file paperwork at some level. 3. 1,000's of trees decompose naturally somewhere. 4. Local community upset that Google is building what Government welcomed while allowing tree decomposition to reign unchecked. The horror, the horror. 5. Sea levels rise, 86.5% of humanity is wiped out, and a great famine ensues. 6. Meanwhile, in the State of California, taxpayer funding is squandered on supertrains to nowhere that noone wants, instead of clearing fuel from forests, while the electric company shuts off the electricity, to prevent forest fires. As much as I dislike big evil corporations, I'm gonna give google a pass on forgetting to hand in their homework this time. Compared to the State of California, they seem to be doing a good job. disclaimer: this summary contains at least one forward looking statement :|

gla67890543

You don't see any activists, green peace, NGOs, Al Gore protesting against data centers and as well as global warming and climate change.

draxen

A lot of the regulatory footguns European legislators have implemented over the past ~35 years were ideologically driven by progressive US/UK academia and media. Unfortunately the distance between stupid, self-defeating Anglo-American activism and European legislation is shorter than the distance between that activism and American legislation. Generally, Europeans would benefit from being as critical of progressive Anglo-American activists, academics, and media as we are of American corporate interests.

monstertank

According to Grok that represents ~0.1% of total trees cut down in Finland per year

AzzieElbab

Hey Google, did you cut trees in Finland?

xbar

Parenting-level policy response recommendation: once the trees grow back, you can proceed.