Google illegally cut down 250K trees in Finland for data center
nypost.com
nypost.com
183 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50048638
253 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50196837
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
"Dog whistling" is the formal term for the style of reporting being published.
Bubbles are bad, always be on guard about accidentally ending up in one. Because it does happen accidentally. A hallmark of it is only being aware of your bubbles word usage...
That's not too say you shouldn't try and recognize the bubbles that you're in, just that there's no escaping them, so it's hard to judge people and their bubbles when you're just as much in one as they are.
Like, are you claiming that this was actually legal? Otherwise, I'm confused as to where you're coming from.
Or did China spark the fire in western countries to care about this stuff?
It does almost seem like it, doesn’t it?
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.
Here's their page for this story: https://ground.news/article/google-knocks-down-250-thousand-...
It also links to related coverage, such as the project being cancelled in response to the outrage.
Receiving investments from people affiliated with the GOP doesn’t seem itself that bad, unless you are so partisan that you yourself are infected with exactly the thing the site aims to combat. Left wing bias is also toxic in certain media sources and should be avoided unless you don’t actually care about bias and are more interested in an agenda.
Ideal service should be local small model run as a self hosted federated instance, piped data to your terminal of choice. The opinion layer could be pulled from federated comments, the analysis layer from sources based on some sort of trust rating. Variance from unambiguous data for instance. RSS friendly maybe?
If I have nothing better to do later I will try to start writing it maybe.
Heh yeah. Sounded to me like “I agree with everything but realized this is a right wing article and just can’t.. so here’s a left wing rage bait instead”
Disagree.
Most people would think this is journalism. This is the kind of journalism most people are interacting with in 2026.
How cool climate helps saving energy ? My naive understanding is it helps with cooling which is mostly done by evaporating water. Does they also cool DS by compressing and expanding fluids?
Also evaporative cooling is not used in most of the world, only in very hot and dry places
Why not news sources that eschew emotional manipulation, like Associated Press or Reuters. They aim for information rather than propaganda.
The article seems to just say, google cleared trees without a permit, it says where they did this and when.
At most maybe the headline implies they did it evily, where it sounds more likely it was beuticratic screw up. But on the whole the article seems to stick to the facts.
"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.
Because there's a bigger bad the smaller bad is totally fine and nobody should care?
And it seems it was 400k in total :
"In addition to the 250,000 trees felled at Muhos, Annala estimates that an additional 150,000 trees were felled at Otanmäki"
I don't care how sick our society is to normalize cutting 400k trees for data centers. It's wrong.
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.
The majority of endangered animals in Finland are water dwelling. The ones that aren't are predators who wander regardless. They are endangered because of their interactions with farmers and livestock.
1 sq mile of forest lost in a nation that has over 80,000 square miles of forest is insignificant.
And, as I pointed out, I am concerned about the power consumption of data centers. But, all things considered, if we are going to have them then the best place to put them to reduce their power consumption is cold climates.
Cutting down trees and replacing them with an industrial park is not a form of carbon capture.
The vast majority of logged biomass does not get turned into long-term wood products.
Obviously you have an uncharitable view of my comment.
It's not "bad faith" just because it's a view you don't share.
> Cutting down trees and replacing them with an industrial park is not a form of carbon capture.
Depends entirely on what's done with the wood that was cut down. For sure, if it's all sold as firewood then no it's ultimately not beneficial. However, if any of it is turned into a long term wood product then yeah, carbon capture has occurred. If it's burnt, it's ultimately a carbon neutral action as the captured carbon from the forest is short term regardless.
The bigger problem is emissions from power consumption at the datacenter. That alone dwarfs everything about the deforestation (a point I initially brought up). I'd say that's the point you and others are missing the forest for the trees. Hyperfocusing on the trees is unproductive and an argument of emotion.
> The vast majority of logged biomass does not get turned into long-term wood products.
Some of it does, which is what makes it carbon capture. You don't have to perfectly capture all carbon from biomass to have achieved carbon capture. This is why unmanaged forests are carbon negative, although inefficient. Even though most carbon is sent back into the atmosphere due to rot, some does end up absorbed in the ground.
I'm guessing you're out of the blast radius so it's easy to form an image and shadow box against it...with the hope others will buy into the diversion...
Btw I'm not even against all data centers. I am for following the law.
Trees take a generation or two to regrow. They don't "grow like weeds." Someone has to plant and protect them while they grow. That's a lot of work.
In the meantime, there are displaced wolves roaming the neighborhoods.
Plus, these trees aren't going to be replanted like in your projection. They're getting replaced with steel, concrete, asphalt, and electronics. All of which supporting tech that consumes rather than generates resources.
And the trees are^Wwere part of a system. They kept muddy water from flowing into the other stream. This will have all kinds of "downstrean" (heh) effects.
Forests can be cleared like this, but it requires assessment, approval and preparation. This wrecklessness is the epitome of "move fast and break things," "ask forgiveness rather than permission," and the "never believe you're wrong" mindsets that have caused so much damage.
As if people didnt have enough reasons to mistrust the U.S.
I hope this disastwe hastens Europe toward de-googlification.
10 to 20 years. Obviously it depends on the species.
> They don't "grow like weeds." Someone has to plant and protect them while they grow. That's a lot of work.
Planting takes some work, for sure, but otherwise it's literally just leaving them alone. That's how sustainable logging works. But even if you don't specifically plant them trees naturally sprout and reforest. For example, when yellowstone burnt down about 40 years ago now, nobody went in to plant new trees there, they naturally grew back and it's now to the point where only a few traces of that fire remain (in the form of a few burnt stumps that you can still see).
Any farmer will tell you that it takes effort to stop trees from growing where you don't want them.
> In the meantime, there are displaced wolves roaming the neighborhoods.
It's 1 sq mile of land in a nation with 80,000 sq miles of forest. The wolves will find other places to roam.
> Plus, these trees aren't going to be replanted like in your projection. They're getting replaced with steel, concrete, asphalt, and electronics. All of which supporting tech that consumes rather than generates resources.
Fair point. I was mostly pushing back on the notion that this is some sort of irrecoverable horrible environmental problem because of the lost trees.
> Forests can be cleared like this, but it requires assessment, approval and preparation. This wrecklessness is the epitome of "move fast and break things," "ask forgiveness rather than permission," and the "never believe you're wrong" mindsets that have caused so much damage.
I'm not defending google for breaking the law and I agree they should have followed the rules. I'm mostly just pointing out that the amount of trees being felled along with the size of land being taken is minuscule in the grand scheme of things. It's a large building, for sure, but an ultimately small amount of land.
And beyond that even when they do recover that's when they have good topsoil. In this situation Google removed the topsoil as well.
Speaking of the topsoil there's other add-on effects such as exposing methylmercury under the topsoil which gets washed away when it now rains. That mercury as well as other sediment makes its way into the water system and it actually clogs fish's gills and poisons the water system.
On top of that I discovered that it's actually 2 square miles not just one. But the fact that it's only a percent of a percent of Finland's total forest isn't really a useful comparison: Imagine if Google bulldozed 3,400 American homes without permission would we say oh there's still plenty of homes left?
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.
It's wildly decoupled in such a way that only full blown moral panic farming could materialize.
Which is, of course, something a damage control agent would try to push.
What are the odds the permit that Google or their contractor failed to pull would’ve been granted? I’d put the odds at 99% given that Google purchased the land. It was inevitable.
In other words, a plantation?
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?
Basically the law says you need to do the assessment if you're removing the trees permanently from over 200 hectares. The company asked for an exemption, the relevant bureau said nope, they cut anyway.
It's not about trees.
It's about fairness.
It's also about the fact these processes are in place to stop large companies causing environmental damage.
It can be argued "a few trees isn't much" but it's about the entire protective mechanism to stop, say mining companies, to wantonly ravage the landscape.
If one company can do it, it means the system isn't implementing the protection the voters would like to have for nature.
Hence it's a quite political hot potato.
It is a nothingburger from the fairness point as well. People knowingly and unknowingly violate a lot of permitting processes all the time and in many cases never suffer any consequences even if discovered, unless they have zealous neighbors.
While things can fall through cracks your disregard for regulation does not really apply as a fair example to the milieu.
You are here repeating the same argument that goes "it's only a crime if you get caught".
This is a specific philosophy of law.
Now while rule of law has different meanings depending on the country where you live, in a nordic democracy like Finland legislation exists for the benefit of public good, and acting by these laws is one of the foundational expectations in the society.
The fact they are recognized to serve the public good, means everyone is expected to follow them, and not following them is not only a process error, but in fact, deeply immoral.
I do realize different countries operate differently and somewhere else laws are not necessarily about trying to achieve philosophical good outcomes for the population.
But in Finland "well it's the law but who follows those things" argument is not common sense rule of thumb but considered wanton disregard of public good - which everyone considers to be a shared responsibility to maintain.
My claim is that Google is getting unfair (in their favor) treatment is incorrect, because average Elias will also get no or next to no negative consequences making a very similar mistake on average Elias's scale.
To be clear my intent is not to misrepresent your statement, just to explain how I hear it.
"I am talking about fairness of application of law"
But there is no fairness in application of law?
The law is the law. Just like 1 + 1 is 2, the role of the legal process is to compute this. And it should apply to same to any party that is active in a legal process.
1) The same consequences are probably a lot less "next to no" on Elias's scale.
2) As Uncle Joe is said to have said, "enough quantity becomes a quality of its own". Google-scale chopping down trees is not just a little bigger, it's so much bigger that it becomes a fundamentally different thing than Elias-scale wrong composting.
So yes, anything short of shutting down any plans for new Google data centers in Finland[1] is Google getting favourable treatment; that claim is not incorrect.
___
[1]: And preferably shutting down any existing ones, too. Just so they, and others like them, maybe will learn.
Why would that in itself make it a "non-story"?
Yes, generally that's how you make public aware of illegal activity.
Not having news about companies braking laws mean generally that the country is likely quite corrupt.
So I don't know where you are from but in Finland anyone breaking a law is expected to be treated equally.
If an individual had ignored the process to this extent they would be in quite hot water.
A large multinational company avoiding the official process feels unjust and is exactly the thing public has been extremely worried of happening regarding the environmental impact.
So it's not because news inflamed something.
It's because something like this is exactly what the public has been alarmed about for a long time.
Yes, obviously people are only angry about things they know about. This says absolutely nothing about the news articles, as the same thing thing can be said about any event, no matter how justified the anger would be.
An article making people angry doesn't automatically make the article rage- or clickbait.
Around here we think that those who pay money to avoid the law have a spot behind the Sauna. I’m quite sure after the next election, because of these shenanigans, we start taxing these DCs to oblivion.
Yes, my point, the media fosters misinformation and deceit to foster rage all in the name of getting people to view ads.
The logging forest was getting cleared not matter what, and it's microscopic compared to total forested land. So the actual story is a permitting fumble.
And entire country getting outraged over a permitting fumble (a parking ticket level occurnace) is something only institution that lives and dies by hijacking eyeballs could orchestrate.
Remember Finland is the country where we scale fines based on income, as the famous article says "Home of the $103,000 Speeding Ticket."
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/03/finland...
Not appropriate for this specific issue, but for "traffic ticket" it's worth remembering.
Boy I sure hope it’s infinity times!
Anyway it seems like you’re incorrect. They actually didn’t have the approval necessary, and no, a zoning approval does not grant all other required forms of approval (obviously).
The issue is that gravity of the crime wouldn't even register 5 years ago in a local paper.
My underlying point is that the media is making people insane, and they are somehow grateful for it.
I’m confused about what you’re confused about.
Is a person who gets into 150 car accidents not a legitimately bigger story than a person who gets into one car accident?
I find this issue small but the choice of these companies to pick the convenient location for them to build a data center concerning, and govts shouldn't be bending over. If these things can be built in space we can build them in places where no one lives and no living being is harmed or logged.. cough.
Now one can argue whether we should build that many data centers or not. But when one is built, the north is a good choice.
Notably, these kind of hit pieces are almost always about extracting some concession from the targeted organization (Google, in this case).
A small minority might be concerned about the trees in the area, but it's not a big topic. Main topics are, again, the bureaucracy and the center's electricity consumption with its effect on consumer electricity bills.
I have huge respect for cultures/countries where the rule of law is observed by its citizens just because it is the right thing to do. If other societies were more like that, every thing would be better.
[I visited Finland, Sweden and Denmark some months ago.]
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
This has been a major story in Finland. The head of Google's Finnish operations was hiding from the biggest newspaper in Finland (Helsingin Sanomat) for days. This is also not on a "Finnish contractor", since the fuck up was on Tuike Finland, which is Google's data center subsidiary in Finland.
Here's the list of articles that Helsingin Sanomat has written about Google's data center shenanigans:
https://www.hs.fi/suomi/art-2000012281667.html
https://www.hs.fi/politiikka/art-2000012293262.html
https://www.hs.fi/politiikka/art-2000012304991.html
https://www.hs.fi/politiikka/art-2000012320374.html
https://www.hs.fi/politiikka/art-2000012324438.html
https://www.hs.fi/politiikka/art-2000012324753.html
https://www.hs.fi/politiikka/art-2000012325168.html
https://www.hs.fi/politiikka/art-2000012326957.html
https://www.hs.fi/suomi/art-2000012327899.html
https://www.hs.fi/politiikka/art-2000012331009.html
https://www.hs.fi/politiikka/art-2000012331370.html
https://www.hs.fi/suomi/art-2000012333022.html
https://www.hs.fi/politiikka/art-2000012332605.html
https://www.hs.fi/politiikka/art-2000012336348.html
https://www.hs.fi/suomi/art-2000012341842.html
https://www.hs.fi/suomi/art-2000012343047.html
https://www.hs.fi/politiikka/art-2000012342968.html
https://www.hs.fi/suomi/art-2000012337298.html
https://www.hs.fi/suomi/art-2000012349563.html
https://www.hs.fi/suomi/art-2000012343936.html
https://www.hs.fi/alueet/art-2000012352803.html
https://www.hs.fi/paakirjoitukset/art-2000012351360.html
https://www.hs.fi/suomi/art-2000012360395.html
https://www.hs.fi/alueet/art-2000012358967.html
They (Tuike Finland, the Google subsidiary, not a contractor) even asked the authorities if they could skip doing the assessment, were not exempted, and they still continued to log.
Google (or really it's contractor) failed to get the permit, a permit which would have been approved anyway.
This is not about a permit. It's about doing an environmental impact assessment. Google's Finnish subsidiary started logging the forest in March. Then right at the end of April, Tuike Finland (Google) asked the national regulators if they could get a case-by-case decision on the need for the environmental impact assessment, wanting to not have to do it for their permits. Then they got an answer on May 22nd, clearly saying that the environmental impact assessment is required. And Google continued logging until August.
This is Google themselves not following the law, asking for exemptions, not getting one, and then continuing to not follow the law.
But please, feel free to post your source if you have contradicting evidence. Here's mine: https://www.hs.fi/politiikka/art-2000012304991.html
The issue is the media response vs the scope of the violation. It's a small misstep that happens constantly in construction.
But yeah, sure. Show me how often the YVA is being ignored in Finnish industrial construction. Better yet if you have examples of companies asking the regulators for a case-by-case exemption, failing to get it, and continuing to log.
The British isles where once covered in forest, too. Then they decided to build a big fleet. Then came the industrial revolution. Now they're down to some 13% of forest...
Yes, Finland might be one of most forested countries in the world (by percentage of land area) now, but history shows that can change quickly if one is not careful about it. Death of a country's forest by a thousand cuts, if you will :)
To an outsider this might sound like an overreaction, but it has to be taken seriously - keep in mind that Finland is one of Europe's premiere locations for grand scale datacentre buildout. Cool climate, lots of available land, politically stable, easy access to cheap and clean power; many very good reasons to assume that this will not be the last datacentre being built there. So yeah, stories like this concern people.
Google didn't do the environmental impact assessment the law required. Google asked the regulators if they could get a case-by-case decision to not do it. Regulators shot down Google's idea, emphasising how a clearance as large as the one they planned would specifically require it. And Google continued to log for months after this.
They're still like nine weeks away from submitting their environmental impact assessment by their own statements. For a logging project they started in March.
You can't even put this on ignorance when they engage in correspondence with the regulators and get told specifically about it. And as Helsingin Sanomat put it: they could have found this information easily on Google.
To be fair, it actually did make the town newspaper and the people who live there actually do have something to say about it.
And now it's probably going to be delayed by months or even years. Whatever Google was trying to accomplish, this wasn't a smart way to do it.
Finland has trees in billions. Still google should follow the laws and hand in the right permits.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2026/...
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.
This here is the exact sentiment which is making the entire country quite angry.
These are not pointless bureaucratic hoops.
The entire voting population is quite worried of large multinational companies starting extractive projects that damage the environment, like mines.
These are the same processes that are put into place to stop say mining companies wantonly ravaging the landscape.
It's a canary of a large company attempting to avoid the process, which was put in place to protect the environment.
So everyone is now quite concerned that are the environmental protections really functional or not.
Basically everyone considers nature to be a public good in Finland. There is "every mans right" which allows you to camp and collect berries almost everywhere, for instance. Majority of the population has vacation homes in the forests next to lakes. A large mine that ignores environmental effects can thus damage both the public goods and the value of private properties quite a lot. I mean - that is the feeling the people have.
So it's not about "company doing something in their own property, big deal". It's about respecting safety mechanism to protect public goods.
And, that the government should keep everyone equal under the law.
No one is thinking only about few trees. Everyone is quite angry that a company could not follow due process without any backlash and worried what happens with, say the next large mine if the systems intended to protect the nature are not really working.
So, no thank you, these are not the data centres we need.
The question is, if there was a button that gave you ten million dollars but someone, somewhere, would die, would you press it? It's an abuse of the trolley problem but ask all your friends next time there's a lull in dinner conversation.
Still, I hope that we're r planting trees elsewhere to make up for the lost of trees in this instance.
Protecting it could indeed be an issue, but destruction is not guaranteed. Finland has advanced air defense.
Us data center stans need to accept the public's worries and make a more collaborative argument.
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.
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 :|
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.
There's a vast ocean of middle ground.
When you own a piece of land containing a forest area there are typically (in most of europe at least) certain rules and regulation as to what you can do and what sort of permissions you need. Eg you may be required to keep some patches of the forest vs just cutting down everything, there can be places you cannot clear the forest completely etc.
Even if google could eventually anyway build some datacenters in that area, it does not mean that they were allowed to do what they did.
But otherwise I agree that this transaction should never have happened in the first place.
But if the very first thing you do on the construction site is disregarding the local laws and regulations, when they were explicitly told about environment assessment requirement, it's not exactly favorable first impression, is it?
Sure don't look like any "administrative error".
For Google, a fine of ~EUR 5 billion is a rounding error in their cost of doing business.
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.
This is part of a 2 year, €13 billion investment by Google, so €5 billion is nearly all of the yearly investment of a single project.
On the other hand, Finland is only a part of Google's world-wide projects, and these projects are expected to produce revenue for, what, decades?
A 10-year time frame changes your numbers to ~0.1% and ~0.2%.
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.
According to the Guardian article, which it the source the NY Post used, if those trees were illegally logged, they cannot be sold to wood-processing plants.
Do you know if the law also prohibits the topsoil from being sold to farms?
You can buy a similar sized forest for €50-150K.
https://www.metsatilat.fi/en/osta?property_type=forest&area_...
What the news is about is "environmental impact study".
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.
It's like they don't care about climate change or global warming.
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?
Also the entity selling the land is ofc not the same as the entity enforcing the law. I assume that everyone was kind of expecting that they would follow the laws.
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.
So no, cutting the trees isn't the topic. The topic is the skipped bureaucracy. Outcome would be the same, but of course you need to follow the steps first.
Something something Dark Side?