No.
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.
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.
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.]
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Why would that in itself make it a "non-story"?
Notably, these kind of hit pieces are almost always about extracting some concession from the targeted organization (Google, in this case).
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.