Behind a wire fence lies a vast gaping wound of earth. Before Google’s arrival a few months ago, an estimated quarter of a million trees occupied the 330 hectares (815 acres) of forest near the town of Muhos in rural northern Finland. Now they are all gone.

After the tech company illegally stripped the entire area to build a datacentre – taking even the top soil with it – all that remains is a vast expanse of mud indented with the trail marks of machinery, puddles and mounds of earth, roots and branches. Residents say that brown water flowing off the site is going into a stream that feeds the Oulujoki River.

  • kroca@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    39 minutes ago

    What can we do as citizens? Somebody an idea? E.g. reach out to the authorities in finnland an eu

  • unglueclass23@programming.dev
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    2 hours ago

    In addition to the 250,000 trees felled at Muhos, Annala estimates that an additional 150,000 trees were felled at Otanmäki. Because the trees have been felled illegally, she says wood from the two sites cannot be sold to wood-processing plan

    400k trees in total. Inconceivable number.

  • BigShammy80@feddit.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    3 hours ago

    To see something ilke this makes me furios.

    In times of climate change, they just don’t give a fuck. Think about all the wildlife that is killed or cast out by this.

    You can’t leave Google fast enough, that’s for sure.

    Fucking evil company.

  • MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    8 hours ago

    So what, just catch the responsible person there? Then you can figure who actually gave the commands, while the construction progress is halted. It’s a illegal building site anyway, you’ll do nothing wrong by just going ahead.

  • BremboTheFourth@piefed.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    27
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    12 hours ago

    This isn’t something that just happens overnight. The local government and law enforcement also needs to be held accountable for failing to stop this.

    • Riddick3001@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      18
      ·
      edit-2
      12 hours ago

      just happens overnight.

      It kind of did actually, they went forward without license awaiting the results of an environmental damage assessment report. Aslo Finland is quite sparsely populated ( ~18/ km2)

      The local government and law enforcement also needs to be held accountable

      Yeah 100%, seems that the Finnish ( and the European) law & mindset is not ready for this sort of BS . The Finnish Gvement actually endorsed this Google investment without even thinking of the consequences. Sort of like money is always good for our country bla la. But in this case it’s actually not true, unless you really tax them/make them pay.

      This story is like a warning for others what could happen one day - or maybe already has happened - in your own backyard.

  • Freeposity@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    16
    ·
    14 hours ago

    I bet Petteri Orpo ends up with a job at Google for a very large salary once he’s thrown out of office.