r/technology • u/Unusual-State1827 • 10h ago
Artificial Intelligence Google Is Accused of Destroying Nearly 500 Football Fields of Forest for New Data Center Project
https://www.gadgetreview.com/google-is-accused-of-destroying-nearly-500-football-fields-of-forest-for-new-data-center-project501
u/jx24 10h ago
The problem is that the punishment for disobeying is too cheap, and not enforced. You want rules enforced, the punishment has to be more than the benefits.
Make them buy and rehabilitate double the land, make them loose the contract, jail someone for breaking the laws. There has to be legal follow through for every single one of these cases where corporations just blatantly ignore law
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u/JonFrost 9h ago
No, take that OR out
The penalty should be ALL of those
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u/warm_winds_whisper_ 6h ago
There should be no cost of doing business when you're making billions burning down the world. There should be no such business at all.
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u/UnknownLesson 46m ago
Another issue is how there's barely any personal liability.
People can be evil because the company is shielding them from the consequences of their actions.
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u/red_ocicat 8h ago
Classic cost of doing business. When the penalty is a fixed fine rather than stopping the project or stripping permits, it's just treated as an operational expense they budgeted for from day one.
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u/No-Spoilers 7h ago
Should fine them a multiple cost of the land, everything on it, and the entire cost of the project and everything that would go in it as well as the yearly power usage.
10x it. If they want a data center make them pay many times more than it costs. And don't forget 10x the pre data center value of any property nearby that wishes to sell before, during or after construction.
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u/theroguex 3h ago
Strip them of the contract. Make them pay a fine equal to or more than the total value of the contract. Jail executives who gave the go ahead. Strip them of their ability to do business in that country and require them to divest themselves of all business holdings there.
DO NOT LET THEM SETTLE OUT OF COURT.
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u/WhiteWinterRains 1h ago
Look what China does to billionaires who misbehave too much. We could all learn a thing or two from how they do capitalism.
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u/BenTherDoneTht 3h ago
To my understanding, the Fins actually do have pretty good laws and financial incentives to enforce them if it were a normal corporation.
The problem is that there are corporations these days that wield the wealth of entire nations' gdp.
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u/NoDragonfruit7115 5h ago
The punishment should be legal repercussions for the management involved in the decision making. If there's no personal repercussions its simply cost of doing business
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u/theroguex 3h ago
It's too late. This ecosystem is completely gone. There is no way to rehabilitate it.
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u/Future-Turtle 10h ago
"Don't be evil"
Absolute farce
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u/frozrdude 10h ago
They already removed that long before they were into AI. Yeah, fuck google.
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u/brainkandy87 8h ago
Kind of amazing I’m old enough to have seen Google’s entire arc. A long way from a fresh IPO and the hottest workplace on the globe. If they don’t prove money and power corrupts, I don’t know what does.
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u/Strange_Dust7128 5h ago
Unless Gabe is a vampire, I’d say Valve is going well
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u/wy1d0 5h ago
What would it change if he was?
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u/Strange_Dust7128 3h ago
Far more anti-consumerist strategies. So far Valve is great with returns and customer service. Also an unquenchable third for human blood and a really good sense of style. Most software developers don't like sunlight anyway, so that's not a real indicator
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u/Choyo 1h ago edited 37m ago
They fucked up the second hand market, they fleeced the customers by not dropping the price tags right after the great digitalization -> which in turn created the "big sales" which pushed most of the industry to not make $60 games anymore, they got themselves into a dominating position but didn't use that to fight shovelwares or abusive DLC-fests, they embraced regional pricing and not in a fair fashion, they are ok with exploiting gambling addiction, etc.
But yeah, they are pushing on the Linux side, so there's that.
Steam fanbois have been the least objective people I met on the internet. Didn't change in 2 decades - got worse even I think, which is understandable when you consider the growing lack of points of reference.
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u/RA3236 53m ago
I agree that Valve isn’t perfect (thank you ACCC) but they are certainly better run than most companies (largely because they are a de facto worker cooperative these days). Keep in mind that Steam’s position is largely based on the biggest games being on Steam itself - if that changed, Steam would very quickly lose its position and income.
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u/Brootal420 2h ago
I think it has more to do with it being a publicly traded company and the short-term profit culture of shareholders
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u/I-STATE-FACTS 9h ago
It’s still in their company code of conduct to this day.
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u/BeyondNetorare 6h ago
I'm pretty sure it's like all those school code of conducts about not bullying
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u/matooz 10h ago
Well said my dude. They should cancel the whole project.
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u/anonkitty2 9h ago
That's insufficient. They have left empty land where four football fields of forest used to be.
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u/yolo-yoshi 5h ago
It really isn’t that much better though, it’s “do the right thing” which is the thing they are not doing in this instant
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u/emohipster 7h ago
Once they realized they can make a lot of money by doing a lot of evil, they dropped that line.
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u/jayeffkay 10h ago
Well they aren’t wrong. (You) don’t be evil… We have a lot of horrible shit we’re working on and don’t want competition.
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u/kapilshar65 10h ago
Whats concerning here is that the environmental review was apparently still ongoing when all this clearing was being done. This is really becoming an issue as these data centers are expanding rapidly to support ai workoads
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u/anonkitty2 9h ago
It hasn't happened as much in America. The government might try to pretend the environment doesn't need a review, the government might decide to let a corporation review itself and only correct if there are complaints (see xAI's primary backup generators,) but corporations can't simply start work before the paperwork is filed.
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u/PopcornInMyTeeth 6h ago
The ai data center being built w/more proposed the town over from me included environmental survey info in their permit application... but it wasn't for the county the construction is happening.
And yet the local planning board rubber stamped it, and hasn't revoked the permit or stopped the construction until correct reports are produced despite being confronted by the very angry public looking through the public info.
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u/PurpleMclaren 6h ago
This is a very naive outlook, I work in construction and I can tell you that this has been widespread for decades in North America as well, building without permits and then dealing with any fallout after.
Ive been told multiple times on job sites to pretend I dont speak english if someone from the city comes.
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u/Rynowash 10h ago
Duck duck go. Banish Google.
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u/speelmydrink 9h ago
The rot goes much deeper than their search engine anymore. r/degoogle yourselves, folks.
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u/NaeemTHM 6h ago
sigh I’m so exhausted. I wish we didn’t have a duopoly when it came to mobile OS’s. It’s either Android or iOS OR but a Pixel and roll with GrapheneOS.
I really wish smartphones worked more like desktops and we could just slap a mobile version of a Linux distro on any hardware we choose 😩
Wasn’t there a smartphone version of Ubuntu in the works for like a decade? What ever happened to that?
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u/creiar 6h ago
You think Duck Duck Go don’t use datacenters?
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u/Kronox_100 6h ago
They use AWS data centers, which are made probably in the same way lol (unless this is specifically for AI)
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u/HugeAnimeHonkers 38m ago
Duck duck go.
You are just changing Google datacenters for Microsoft datacenters... DDG is literally Bing without the tracking stuff.
Shit, Bing runs on Azure(Microsoft version of AWS) and iirc those datacenters are waaaaaay more that whatever Google has.
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u/AnythingOk5 7h ago
Anything but the metric system...
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u/itchylol742 3h ago
I thought they destroyed 500 literal football fields which enraged American football fans when I read the headline lmao
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u/jecht8 3h ago
Why did they use football fields? Just as simply say nearly a square mile.
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u/Fableous 3h ago
Americans don't understand measurements.
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u/IcedGooseMaverick 2h ago
American: football field big long rectangle thing where man throw ball to other man. Me understand that reference
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u/willismthomp 9h ago edited 5h ago
Football fields as a measurement is almost as dumb as America still using the imperial system while the rest of the world use metric
Edit added last word.
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u/Any-Smell-4929 8h ago
Regardless of the stupidity of the American measurement system, both football fields and acres can be easily visualized by the average reader.
Its common for houses to be built on quarter acre lots and a football field minus the end zones is very close to one acre in area.
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u/Vytome 5h ago
I've never really had to know how big an acre was before. This is my first time really being able to visualize it, thank you
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u/OuttaD00r 3h ago edited 2h ago
Man, i'm tired of seeing this excuse. This is always the excuse...just learn the measurements like everyone else and wouldn't need to do shit like this
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u/feed_me_haribo 2h ago
Wait until you hear about people using swimming pools as a reference for water. It's almost like sometimes people use every day examples for scale reference.
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u/Dazzling_Morning2642 8h ago
Especially when 80% of Americans don’t know how wide a football field is.
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u/Laiko_Kairen 5h ago
Especially when 80% of Americans don’t know how wide a football field is.
I guess your schools didn't have PE or a football team? Basically every American has spent time on a football field.
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u/NUMBerONEisFIRST 6h ago
We need a purge of billionaires.
They are the biggest threat to the world, and there are more of us than them.
For now at least.
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u/TheEagleDied 10h ago
The writer of this article really respect the intelligence of the reader with the football analogy.
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u/reddituser28910112 10h ago
As an American, the only units of measure I understand are football fields and Big Macs.
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u/variaati0 10h ago
Oh they absolutely destroyed the forest, that is not what is at issue. That is just simply a fact. What is at issue is... did they have proper permission for the cut (most likely they didn't) and for example was it protected forest that one shouldn't cut. Instead of "tree farm" forest with no specific natural value, since there is very little natural about "tree farm", expect... it has trees in it. Equal size, equal spacing, same cultivar... trees and nothing else. Everything else except the low surface growth shrubs have been cleared out to give the trees room to grow. Tree farm growers would probably even remove the moss and shrubs, but a) it is nigh impossible that stuff is very persistent b) doing so would harm their precious trees anyway. Tree roots need covering moss, shrubs and top soil for proper growing.
If the plant is to be built 500 football fields need to be cut. There is no way around it. Question is a) are they doing it in the correct process b) is that plant worth that forest cut in the first place.
However I would point out 500 football fields of "tree farm" is nothing on Finnish scale. Forestry companies cut way more than that as part of normal forestry logging. Only difference is this wouldn't be re planted, since well it will have an industrial estate built on it.
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u/MisterSanitation 9h ago
Well at least in my local state chasing some sketchy developments where poisoning is a concern, they likely did have the approval since the FDA is apparently only requiring high fives to issue permits and extensions. That combined with local legislators rubber stamping "shortening the requirements to faster serve the customers" makes a very legal and dangerous precedent.
Again at least in my State the data centers and power companies are owned by the same shell companies who hold veto power on adding more power generation. That combined with local legislators on the county level not being required to show any money received by "private donors" means these are being pulled and resubmitted once the voters go back to normal life falsely assuming they stopped it. Some of the projects are being entered as a special case that can circumvent public opinion too, preventing any discussion at all. All the shady shit I saw was just shockingly transparent corruption. Legal, disgusting, and shameless corruption to the detriment of the voiceless.
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u/Sad-Yak6252 7h ago
Some of these local legislators learn the hard way. The Google data center in The Dalles, Oregon is now using over a third of the city's water supply. The city is petitioning the Mount Hood National Forest to obtain another source of water. https://www.opb.org/article/2026/01/15/as-googles-water-demands-grow-the-dalles-aims-to-pull-more-from-mount-hood-forest/
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u/Complete-Move-6573 4h ago
They never make this much of space available for housing to bring down housing costs.
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u/neighborlyhorse 6h ago
For a little comparison, the beef industry is currently destroying around 2.1 million hectares of tropical rain forest annually (not counting any other kind)
compared to... 300 hectares for this data center project.
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u/AGushingHeadWound 3h ago
I'm surprised Finland allowed this shit. Apparently everybody is sucking corporate dick, everywhere now.
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u/HealthyBits 1h ago
The planet is burning and we keep cutting down trees so we can enjoy dancing cat videos.
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u/williamgman 10h ago
"The clearing happened first; the environmental review was still running."
The classic ask for forgiveness rather than permission move.
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u/Revolvyerom 7h ago
The best way to penalize them for doing it while completely ignoring the environmental review is to seize the land and make it a preserve
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u/penguished 7h ago
The poor planet. Cities and suburbia already blight the living shit out of natural growth and biodiversity. Go in a forest for a minute and you'll be surprised on how many different things grow and live there. We're such a strange, warped, weirdo species for having so little respect for all that.
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u/Destroyer6202 5h ago
Only when everything is perished will we understand that it was all worthless.
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u/throwaway09234023322 9h ago
Wouldn't it be a construction company handling the land clearing and such instead of Google? Or does Google directly handle the construction? I would the construction company should ensure there are valid permits and what not before starting work.
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u/reality_bytes_ 2h ago
Lol can't believe this has 11k + up votes. Not news nor a huge number. Logging takes more than that for breakfast.
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u/SpiderSlitScrotums 10h ago
How much is that in golf courses or beach volleyball courts?
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u/Moron-Whisperer 8h ago
This is like nothing. 1 country block. 1 country block gets flatted all the time for all sorts of things. 1 sq mile. The people who are complaining about this just want to complain about data centers as this is minuscule in size
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u/cyclemonster 2h ago edited 2h ago
More than 3/4th of Finland is covered in Forest. This represents about fifteen ten-thousandths of a percent of Finland's forested land area.
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u/JP76 8h ago
They were supposed to wait for an environmental review. And this happened in Finland.
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u/Moron-Whisperer 7h ago
Doesn’t matter. People are just against them and creating barriers at this point. While they’ll still happen. A cleared sq mile of land is literally nothing. People will complain about anything anymore.
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u/Tempires 5h ago
So you mean it is fine to break law as long as amount of forest being cut seem small to you?
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u/Moron-Whisperer 5h ago
You’re proving my point. You’ve already assumed that they broke the law.
Also how much someone breaks the law actually does matter. It comes into consideration in basically every case. So yea, the penalty will be lower if any for a smaller area of forest.
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u/theroguex 3h ago
Why the FUCK would a data center need to be that large?
I'm done with this. It's time to get these idiotic companies under control and hold them to the fire for their stupid shit.
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u/Captainj2001 10h ago
They would cover the planet with data centers if they could and we would all live underground in the caves where it's still warm.
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u/newleafkratom 9h ago
If you have a better plan to generate AI Harry Potter porn I'd like to hear about it. /s
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u/Western-Corner-431 4h ago
Arrest the decision makers. Someone signed off on this. People won’t stop until they’re in jail
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u/Longjumping-Salad484 3h ago
they'll be fined $200k, then won't pay, no one will care, there will never be any consequences, humanity is fcked
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u/Bleezy79 3h ago
Psh, what? It's not like the Earth's vegetation is what maintains our atmosphere. It's not like we need the tree's for oxygen to breathe. They just get in the way of our profits!!
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u/Shes_dead_Jim 2h ago
They need to revoke googles contract and make them replant 2 trees for every one they cut down
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u/charavaka 2h ago
And that's just the direct destruction. Water extraction, heat production and pollution will destroy a lot more.
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u/grahamulax 6h ago
Hey, why are they doing that though? Hey why aren’t hardware companies making consumer products anymore?
Do they expect us to subscribe for life and get rid of technology in our homes that is actually beneficial to us that brings us entertainment, learning, jobs, creating, and all for what?
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u/grahamulax 6h ago
Also, ironically, they are destroying books. They are using for training. From force to paper to landfill. Than what they own that specific unique data?
If this isn’t a signal to get the fuck off social media and the Internet and stop posting fans that are data, which is everything, then I don’t know what is.
Maybe we should all just poison the fuck out of the Internet
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u/SeeMarkFly 4h ago
Rich people "rent" talent. They don't HAVE talent, they BUY it.
AI allows "wealth" to access "talent" without letting talent access wealth.
That is WHY the rich want AI.Now what rich person would not want that?
And what poor person would want that?See the problem yet?
The rich are STEALING from the poor, and it's all legal.
"When PLUNDER becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that AUTHORIZES it and a moral code that GLORIFIES it."
-Frederic Bastiat- (France 1801-1850)
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u/grahamulax 4h ago
Hell, yes, best quote. I’ve heard. This is literally what I have been thinking for two years. I am a creative, but also technical, I animate, but I also game dev, and code and make apps, and understand the architecture and efficiencies that are needed.
There’s nothing efficient about how corporate AI is planned.
It’s a bomb waiting to go off and all the people will be like what the hell happened, but literally there has been signs for so long.
I really recommend following politics at least in the tech sector because that’s what helps you predict the landscape that’s ever changing. Or fight back on it.
I am right now actually and I have made something that will change computers and I’ll sell it at a very, very cheap price one time. I’m really excited about it and it all works, but I just gotta make it a little bit better for normal users if that’s the goal. Extremely complicated tech that we’ve had for decades, but utilizing it the way you want to.
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u/meleecow 9h ago
What did they take this play from the trump play book? Do some terrible shit first then say sorry and keep doing it anyways. Shesh
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u/Linked713 8h ago
USA will do everything not to use the metric system
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u/Sad-Yak6252 7h ago
We actually started going metric in 1975 and had freeway signs in kilometers. Reagan put the brakes on it in 1982.
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u/MisfitPotatoReborn 7h ago
Read the article. This is a Finnish story and the football field analogy is using the size of FIFA soccer fields. If the article used American football fields, it would be 560.
The braindead area analogy is tailored for you.
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u/ConejitosDeAmor 8h ago
I'm going to say what I see no one else saying:
Nobody should be collecting our 'data'. Period.
We act like "(shrugs shoulders) Well, that's just how it is' but the fact is all of it is evil - it's designed NO, NOT TO HELP US but to ruin our lives.
That shit eating gnome that runs google would turn his mother's vagina into a data center if he could. It's fcking evil.
If you all want to bring kids into this dystopian nightmare you are selfish. Period.
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u/gillgrissom 8h ago
Rampant theft of forests, just to sell a 99 cents phone app. Fuck google, meta et all.
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u/VinPickles 10h ago
i mean, destroying nature to this extent should result in the folks responsible going through the woodchipper. that will discourage it going forward
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u/surfkaboom 9h ago
There are no more good sites for hyperscalers in the US. Nordics are being tapped now, Malaysia will follow
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u/AlienInOrigin 7h ago
Now, are these American Football fields, soccer sized fields, 5-a-side football sized fields?
How about metres like the rest of the world?
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u/Interesting_Basis_44 7h ago
We were told in school 1970s that by 1984 we would be using metric system. Ya see never happened. We still had to learn metric system. Do I remember it lol 😝 no.
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u/MicroSofty88 10h ago
Seems like something that would be pretty easy to check, rather than “accuse”
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u/Woodie626 10h ago
Seems you can't read,
Google told AFP that “tree felling activities have been taking place in compliance with Forestry Act requirements,” adding that ecological surveys were conducted before work began and that areas of high environmental value were protected during forestry operations.
Hanna Halmeenpää, chair of the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation, disputes that framing. Satellite imagery, she says, shows four areas identified as nature sites in the local plan were bulldozed, potentially disrupting wildlife corridors and local bird species.
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u/OneAppropriate6885 8h ago
"Finnish Association for Nature Conservation" is this just some non-profit?
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u/MoistBaguetteLawyer 2h ago
I don't think anyone here understand how insignificant that is. It's only a square mile.
Rhode Island is 505,800 football fields large, or 1,214 square miles.
The U.S. combined is 1,709,442,020 football fields large.
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u/Unusual-State1827 10h ago
Approximately 300 hectares of Finnish forest, reportedly comparable to 500 football fields, were cleared for Google's data-center expansion before environmental-impact assessment procedures for the project had concluded. The clearing happened first; the environmental review was still running.
Finland's supervisory agency LVV is examining whether Tuike Finland Oy, Google's Finnish project company, failed to complete a legally required environmental-impact assessment before beginning permanent land-use conversion reportedly exceeding 200 hectares.
Google told AFP that “tree felling activities have been taking place in compliance with Forestry Act requirements,” adding that ecological surveys were conducted before work began and that areas of high environmental value were protected during forestry operations.
Hanna Halmeenpää, chair of the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation, disputes that framing. Satellite imagery, she says, shows four areas identified as nature sites in the local plan were bulldozed, potentially disrupting wildlife corridors and local bird species.