Link: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2026/oct/22/finland-google-felling-trees-datacentre

Google illegally demolished an estimated 250,000 trees in Finland to make way for a data center, leaving behind a lifeless mud wasteland that forced packs of wolves into a nearby town in search of food and infuriated locals, according to a report.

I have hope that Finland will do something about it. Force google to plant trees, massive fine, plus so much more is a good place to start.

Datacenters do not bring jobs or tax income! I scream into a room of people who do already know that but it breaks my heart seeing the damage done there.

They bring massive land, energy, and water use, and are manned by only a skeleton crew of tech workers, even a small town wouldn't notice a bump in population or revenue.

Leaders who approve them are either too naive and stupid by not understanding this (and thus should be voted out) or they are corrupt and accepting bribes (and should be kicked out or minimum voted out)

They should disown them and take back all the land. AND make them pay then for all the needed restoration of nature, several years probably.

Strike them hard, something like "sorry, you breached our trust in the most disrespectful of ways, so now you're barred from conducting any sort of business in our country for 20 years, and that includes any shell companies you set up".

Topsoil is an underappreciated resource.

Edit: Seriously, depending on the environment in Finland, this is a civilizational damage that could take centuries to repair.

The difference between Haiti and the Domincan Republic comes down to the DR preserved its forests and topsoil (thanks to a brutal but environmentally conscious dictatorship), but Haiti deforested with abandon. [Source: The much and rightfully maligned Jared Diamond]

I have hope that Finland will do something about it.

The current government is fully JD Vance tier corporate drones. National Coalition Party parallels Bolsonaro's PL with its regard for environmental issues. They are only interested in getting their fellow empty-suit fuckwits bigger salaries, at the expense of everyone else in Finland. The only thing they campaign on is "Immigrant Invasion!" and "Communists are ruining the Country!"

Shit, you think Internet trolls are bad, Finland has some of the OG trolls in those woods and you don't want to piss them off

Don't Be Evil

I would go with “forever” personally

Same as (still somehow after they lost election) current fuckers in Sweden. They allow mining for fucking metals everywhere, even in protected areas. They let fucking forest companies take down old forests, without mandatory wildlife inventory. They simply come and clearcut. Don't buy paper made in Sweden.

I feel so bad for the wildlife 😟

Don’t buy paper

👍

Here's a link to the petition urging tighter regulation for data centers inside Finland https://www.kansalaisaloite.fi/fi/aloite/17997

With perpetuity throughout the universe

I think the trolls are over in Sweden or Norway nowadays. We have snipers, though.

They could bring tax income but they get tax breaks instead to bring 6 jobs in.

In NW Florida we have an inch of topsoil in most places, then it's a red clay/sand mix all the way to China. I never remove organic material from the yard and toss scraps out there to run over with the mower. I will not life long enough to make the slightest dent.

The Internet thinks you've got your own trolls

https://mythus.fandom.com/wiki/Peikko

https://finland.fi/life-society/finnish-mythical-creatures-still-lurk/

I wouldn't be surprised if they were also snipers, though. I've known a few Finns, you are all badass....

Depending on density, that's only a square mile worth of trees. In my area, 250,000 would be the low end of a square mile, probably closer to 1/2 to 3/4. Don't get me wrong, it's bad, but every solar farm in NW Florida is far larger than that. (Someone will point of the difference in use cases. Don't. I get it.)

I work at a tiny old datacenter that employs like 40 people full time. And we have only like 50 racks of servers

Do you think the thing just runs itself? You need electrians, hvac specialists, fire system specialists, UPS specialists, on top of all the computer related roles. There are tons of different moving parts

It's also one of the best ways to still get into the tech industry because the guys physically racking servers and replacing disks can be hired fresh out of school no problem, and those people directly work with veteran sysadmins who get to absorb that knowledge and move up that way

I saw a movie set in Texas where a kid is punished by having to dig an enormous 12-foot-hole over the weekend. Coming from New England, where there's a giant rock every few inches, I thought, "must be nice."

Topsoil can blow away if there's nothing on it, though, no matter how thick it is... hard lesson from history.

My scrawny 10-yo son and I dug a hole for 150G pond in minutes. Most of the effort was wheeling it to down to the backyard. Only place I have organics is it our camp, and it's mostly swamp.

You're talking in terms of an individual. 50 people is not bringing a lot of jobs to an economy and not worth giving tax breaks to. To a town of 5000 it would be 1% of the population working there, maybe 2% with electricians as you say. Politicians think it's like their corporate headquarters where thousands of people will be working there

Yeah but it's 50 people in this very small scale example. Also all those people make good money and eat at restaurants most days for lunch. Etc etc

A big scale high compute datacenter would need hundreds of staff

Except modern DCs operate on a “lights out” policy. They can install racks of servers and capacity upfront and then only have to stop by every couple months with a remote team to swap things out. Churning away with power from your community and tax breaks but no workers to deal with. It’s already a thing.

Its 330 hectares (815 acres), as it is written in the article

You can make it 500 and it still isn't that economic "boom" that big tech promises.

No but it's not a build it and forget it thing either like the common narrative thinks these days

They get bribes

I didn't say that, I said it's a skeleton crew, which it is. Are those people technical? Yes. But it's not something worth bringing to your small town expecting jobs.

That's 1.27sqmi.

How do you define skeleton crew?

Do not piss off the Suomi. The Russians know about it and Google is going to find out.

Yes datacenters practically run themselves. Modern datacenters owned and operated by one company are very efficient role wise and need a skeleton crew to operate.

The people making good money working “at” these datacenters eat at restaurants thousands of miles away from the towns the datacenters are located. There are very few local datacenters jobs and the ones that are local do not make very good money.

Big scale high compute datacenters need like 15-30 people to operate, not hundreds.

So, why were they elected? aren't they best Finland has ?

The finish government should shaft all data centre plans and force Google to plant 250,000 new trees + pay a hefty fine. Something tells me that's not what's gonna happen, though.

It technically isn't a skeleton crew if that small workforce is the standard roster for that project.

Eh, comparing what Soviet Union did in 1939 (ally with nazis and start a major war) versus bringing in new business?

this is a civilizational damage that could take centuries to repair.

The google forest cuts were 0.05% of the annual felling in Finland. Are we doing civilizational damage 2000 times worse, every year, than what Google did?

Does your lemmy client not allow you quote full sentences? I wrote depending on the environment.

Also, there's a difference between responsible logging and clear cutting.

I'm more interested in the consequences, a fine sounds like a bribe now, how is it going to get fixed?

Didn't the Finnish government make the deal with Google in the first place?

Refugees fleeing the Middle East and Ukraine after decades of war have become an agitation point for easily gulled Finnish isolationists.

Finnish government are told to send an angry worded letter to Google, so citizens can see they are protecting the nature.

It's not like those trees had any intrinsic value or anything.

No more corporate fines. It's time for personal accountability.

Only flesh.

Corporate Kombat!

Fight!

Seize the data center. Google built it but doesn’t get to use it. Google will be a lot more careful about placement of data centers if that keeps happening.