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Comment by dwroberts | Hacker News Reader

It is implied to be illegal despite Google claiming it followed all laws etc:

> Public reports cited by the LVV indicate that around 300 hectares of Finnish forest, roughly 420 football fields, had already been cleared before the project's environmental impact could be properly assessed.

Presumably with the environmental assessment being a prerequisite for a permit or something

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It's important to note that when Google has said to have followed the law, it's been referring to following the forestry law. But the requirement to perform the environmental impact assessment is not part of the forestry law, but rather it's its own law.

(Source: https://www.hs.fi/politiikka/art-2000012304991.html)

The big problem here is that if it is found illegal, the crime Google committed is irreversible. They cannot undo the damage done to the 300 hectares of forest.

What then?

Lots of crimes are irreversible, though, and the justice system handles them fine.

They literally could just replant those 300 hectares of forest. Or 3000 hectares to show how sorry they are. It's not irreparable.

The same could be said about the illegal murder of your hypothetical child, could it not? You can just grow a new one, no big deal.

The cutting down of a forest is obviously not morally or legally or technically comparable to the killing of a child. I honestly wonder whether you think you are persuading anyone when you make such a comparison, do you really believe that these trees should be held in the same regard as children?

The point is that the damage is not so simple to reverse. There are consequences to destroying and regrowing that would not be felt if the destruction had not occurred.

And the point the previous commenter was making is that the damage is pretty simple to reverse because trees are fungible, a point that is not countered in any way by an incredible analogy to notoriously non-fungible children.

Trees, forests, and the things that live in them are also non-fungible. This was also indicated in my previous comment. Hope this helps!

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