News from the home of IT on October 24th: In early October, Finnish regulatory authorities demanded that Tuike Finland Oy, a data center developer under Google, immediately cease illegal deforestation.
To build data centers, Google cut down about 526 hectares of forest, with approximately 250,000 trees being removed. This incident quickly attracted attention and further exacerbated the dissatisfaction in European society regarding the boom in data center construction.
According to the latest report by The Guardian in the UK on the 22nd local time, the original boreal coniferous forests that Google cut down have now become wastelands covered with mud and stumps, forcing wildlife that has lost its habitat to migrate away.
Near the village of Otanmäki in Finland, after the forests were cut down, the wolf packs lost their usual prey and had to seek food in the nearby villages. Annie Lanta, a 53-year-old local resident, told The Guardian: "It's only because all the wild animals in the forest have fled that the wolves come into the villages."
The Lanta family has lived in Otanmäki for generations, but a series of unfortunate events have made her consider moving permanently. She expresses her disapproval of Google's plans to build data centers: "I don't want data centers to be built here, nor do I want them to appear anywhere in Finland. I don't agree with the entire philosophy of AI, nor do I like the changes that are happening in the world, especially not in this way. Everything is coming too fast and too early."
Antti Jakonin, a resident of Mukhos, directly criticized Google's approach. He told The Guardian, "They got it wrong from the start; it's completely the American way of doing things. It makes no sense at all, it's absurd."
Similar conflicts are also occurring in the United States, where Google's headquarters is located. As data center construction continues to expand, the contradictions between developers and the natural environment have become increasingly prominent, with the natural environment often becoming the victim.
In West Virginia, in order to make way for the super-large data center planned for Anthropic, a highly endangered American chestnut forest is facing the fate of being leveled. In the suburbs of Fort Wayne, Indiana, parts of the land that was originally covered with wetlands are being leveled to build Google's new data center. A data center operator in southern New Jersey was fined $1 million for using 62 unauthorized gas generators. Inspectors found that these generators continuously emitted waste gas into the surrounding environment.
Looking globally, the construction of data centers almost always comes with the destruction of natural resources, and it is becoming increasingly difficult for people to ignore the environmental costs associated with them.
