183 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50048638
253 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50196837
Something something Dark Side?
"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)
This is the most effective altruist anti AI headline you could get out of this story.
250k trees seems like a lot from you looking out your window. From the perspective of trees we cut down every year (that we account for) it is close to a rounding error. This is a place where they take forest management seriously - and thats the only reason any one even noticed or had to get a permit.
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.
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?
This isn’t about trees. This is about not following the environmental regulation.
To put in contrast this is something for which a private citizen could get into a lot of hot water.
So it’s about can a large corporation act as they like or do they need to follow the laws just like everyone else.
If they had followed the law, the trees would not be an issue.
So, no thank you, these are not the data centres we need.
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/...
I think your “datacenter bad” and “non story” comments indicate that you are biased in the opposite direction that you’re complaining about. You seem not to be interested in actually learning whether any serious misconduct occurred, which is genuinely up for debate.
This issue genuinely matters to a lot of people. Tribalism doesn’t help on either side.
Yup, definitely no partisan spin in the guardian article...c'mon
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2026/...
Finland has trees in billions. Still google should follow the laws and hand in the right permits.
Also sucks to think that mature trees take a really long time to grow. For example, Oak trees often live 150 - 300 years.
Finland alone has around 22 billion trees. People seriously underestimate how many trees there are on Earth.
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 :|
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.
The bigger thing I worry about isn't the felled trees, but rather the power consumption of the data center. And for that, I think it's generally good that google is placing a datacenter in a cold climate country.
Someone caring for environnement might think: the finlandforestgate focus public attention while there’s way more important and actionable environmental issues to solve.
At some point, you need cognitive dissonance to function and we see that pretty plainly on HN since the money in the space became very good.
Google also owns the land and it’s likely known they plan on building a data center.
In other words, a plantation?
Its ridiculous and insane if you think about it for five seconds.
They bring substantial tax revenue to their towns, while having basically zero environmental impact. After the „water usage“ thing became stale (since they barely use any) apparently they’re going for „chopped trees“, nevermind that land use is very modest and rounds to zero when considering a country’s forrest inventory.
And no, they don’t even drive up electricity bills in any meaningful way.
I don't 100% understand it, but it seems to be driven partially by AI hate, and partially by bad experiences and stories making the rounds, like backup generator exhaust and noise making people nearby angry.
Until it is not; some companies are actually putting environnemental & employees health issues with sincerity in their contracts. With shared responsibilities.
It was about making an environmental assesment before starting on the clearing.
Which is mandated by law.
Now the environmental impact cannot be assessed.
This is making the entire country quite angry.
Because of the news articles.
> It was about making an environmental assessment before starting on the clearing.
Proof? Because it was already rezoned to industrial from what OP said. Why would it be rezoned if the municipality didn't intend for the trees to be cut and a DC built there?
We all know It's okay to subcontract evil, like having poor paid workers in Asian countries. The big company is never at fault in such cases /s
Us data center stans need to accept the public's worries and make a more collaborative argument
Or did China spark the fire in western countries to care about this stuff?
Can we have a news feed the is parsed and checked again other sources to deliver the highest proportion of base factually unambiguous data, with maybe a tier 2/3 probable analysis/opinions as optional overlays? Seems doable
You may enjoy Kagi’s News offering. Linked is the same topic.
Disagree.
Most people would think this is journalism. This is the kind of journalism most people are interacting with in 2026.
GuestFAUniverse•51m ago
Choco31415•33m ago
sejje•15m ago
eesmith•30m ago
For Google, a fine of ~EUR 5 billion is a rounding error in their cost of doing business.
kristjansson•16m ago
Not really? That’d be ~1% of global revenue and ~2% of opex? Sure they could pay it, but it’s not a negligible amount.
peri-cl•10m ago
That's a perfectly normal and environmentally conscious thing to do before laying down concrete foundations. Topsoil is recycled and sold to farms. To leave it in place would pointlessly waste an ecological resource.
helsinkiandrew•27m ago
You can buy a similar sized forest for €50-150K.
https://www.metsatilat.fi/en/osta?property_type=forest&area_...
miohtama•23m ago
What the news is about is "environmental impact study".
Aurornis•13m ago
Or maybe this is a bad measure?
You also forgot that Google owned the trees that they cut down, so they would be compensating themselves.
The debate is about the order in which a contractor pulled permits. It’s silly how much people are obsessing over some trees being cut down. This happens with all development.