Finland just ordered Google to stop work on two data centers after someone noticed the company was clearing forests to build them. The irony is so thick you could cut it with a fiber optic cable.
Google’s sustainability team had been assuring everyone that these centers would run on renewable energy. Renewable energy sourced from where, exactly? The company’s environmental impact reports are masterpieces of selective accounting—they measure the solar panels on the roof while ignoring the clear-cut acreage underneath.
The Finnish government finally asked the obvious question: why are we bulldozing boreal forests so Americans can stream cat videos with a 2ms latency improvement? Google’s response amounted to “we’re very green, actually, have you seen our carbon-neutral pledge from 2020?” A pledge, notably, that applies to their global operations only after they’ve already built the infrastructure.
This is the standard tech playbook. Announce climate commitments in a well-designed PDF. Quietly clear-cut forests in countries with favorable permitting. Wait for a journalist to notice. Pause operations. Rebrand as “committed to dialogue with stakeholders.” Resume operations with slightly better PR.
Finland’s halt is temporary. Google’s lawyers are already drafting the appeal. By next year, the data centers will be humming, the forests will be gone, and Google will release a report about how they’ve achieved net-zero something-or-other through blockchain-verified carbon offsets in Namibia.