Article · AI translation
IT Home reported on October 24 that, in early October, Finnish regulators ordered Tuike Finland Oy, a Google-owned data center developer, to immediately stop illegally clearing forest.
To build a data center, Google cleared about 526 hectares of forest, with 250,000 trees felled. The incident quickly drew attention and further intensified discontent across Europe over the data center construction boom.
The latest details disclosed by the British newspaper The Guardian on the 22nd, local time, show that the old-growth boreal forest cleared by Google has become a wasteland of mud and tree stumps, forcing wildlife that lost its habitat to leave.
Near the Finnish village of Otanmäki, after the forest was cleared, wolves lost their usual prey and had to seek food in nearby villages. Anne Ranta, a 53-year-old local resident, told The Guardian: “All the wild animals in the forest fled, so the wolves came into the village.”
Ranta’s family has lived in Otanmäki for generations, but a succession of upheavals has made her consider leaving permanently. She strongly opposes Google’s plan to build a data center: “I don’t want a data center built here, and I don’t want them anywhere in Finland. I don’t agree with the whole idea of AI, and I don’t like the changes taking place in the world, much less the way the world is changing. It’s all happening too fast and too soon.”
Antti Jaakkonen, a resident of Muhos, directly criticized Google’s approach. He told The Guardian: “They got it wrong from the start. It’s completely the American way. It makes no sense. It’s quite absurd.”
Similar conflicts are also playing out in the United States, where Google is headquartered. As data center construction continues to expand, conflicts between developers and the natural environment are becoming more pronounced, and the environment often pays the price.
In West Virginia, an extremely endangered stand of American chestnut trees faces being bulldozed to make room for Anthropic’s planned hyperscale data center. On the outskirts of Fort Wayne, Indiana, part of a tract that was once largely wetland is being leveled for a new Google data center. In southern New Jersey, a data center operator was fined $1 million (IT Home note: approximately 6.685 million yuan at the current exchange rate) for using 62 unpermitted gas generators. Inspectors found that the generators were continuously emitting exhaust into the surrounding environment.
Around the world, data center construction is almost always accompanied by damage to natural resources, and people are finding it increasingly difficult to ignore its environmental cost.
Related reading:
“Finnish Forest ‘Shaved Bare’: Google Illegally Clears 250,000 Trees for AI Data Center”