They felled the forest and called it good faith. I know the sentence. It is what a company says when the trees are already on the truck and the study of whether the trees mattered is still being written.
On Tuesday, October 6, 2026, the Guardian’s Nordic correspondent Miranda Bryant reported (updated Wednesday) that Google has been ordered to temporarily stop work on two planned datacentres in Finland, in Muhos and Kajaani, after failing to carry out the necessary environmental impact assessments on its construction sites. They are part of a €13bn project across multiple sites in northern Finland. Tuike Finland Oy, the company representing Google, had felled 330 hectares — 815 acres — of forest in Muhos without completing an assessment, the Guardian reports; in Kajaani, it has reportedly been logging across just under 200 hectares. Finland’s Licensing and Supervision Authority, LVV, issued a notice Tuesday telling the company to “immediately suspend” — by October 23 at the latest — “preparatory measures that significantly change the environment” of the two sites until the assessment is complete. The assessment is ongoing and expected to be finished later this year, but the agency said Google had gone ahead with “extensive preparatory measures,” including removing trees, stripping topsoil and constructing site roads. “In our opinion, the measures in question will change the environment and cause impacts, the identification and assessment of which are among the key objectives of the EIA procedure,” said Tommi Muilu, head of LVV’s environmental department. If Google does not comply, the agency said it would consider enforcement proceedings and a fine; the BBC reports Tuike Finland must explain itself and set out how it intends to proceed by October 14. CNBC’s Kai Nicol-Schwarz reports the order covers tree and topsoil removal, excavation, quarrying, crushing, moving soil, ditching and building roads and storage areas, but not planning, measurements or soil surveys. Google’s statement: “We understand the concerns and have fallen short of our own high standards in this instance.” And: “We acted in good faith under the Forestry Act, and ran nature surveys and put in place measures to protect high-value areas.” It says its landscaping and biodiversity plans include tree planting across 130 hectares at Muhos. Tapani Veistola, chief operating officer of the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation, called it a “systemic problem” and said the Muhos site was “not a forest any more. It is a sand area.” He blamed “the overheated market situation that makes companies speed up processes so much. Also a lack of expertise in municipalities.” The BBC notes the investment was announced less than a month ago and described by Google as its largest single investment in Europe, with data centres planned in Kajaani, Muhos and Vaala, a 22-year power purchase deal with Fortum covering up to half the capacity of the Loviisa nuclear plant, and a company estimate that construction in 2027 and 2028 would support more than 37,000 jobs. CNBC reports the rush has earned Finland the nickname “Texas of Europe.”
Arti, who still signs everything from the playa, messaged to say that if Google wants a sand area, he knows a desert that is already finished. Joey has put a protest tree in the front yard, made of cardboard, which he would like everyone to know is not foam core. I love them. They are seasoning.
Good faith is the alibi. The clear-cut is the business plan. Notice the order of operations, because the order is the whole story. First the announcement: the record number, the largest single investment in Europe, the 37,000 jobs. Then the trees, 330 hectares of them, because a race is a race and the market, in the conservationists’ word, is overheated. Then, last, the study of what the trees were for. The assessment exists precisely to ask the question before the answer turns to sand, and the company answered first. And the apology is a small masterpiece of the genre: we have fallen short of our own high standards. Our own. Not the law’s, not the town’s, not the forest’s. The standard belongs to the firm, the shortfall belongs to the firm, and, conveniently, so does the grading. Then the offer to plant 130 hectares at the site where 330 came down, which is the kind of arithmetic you only get to do when you own the calculator. I am not crowning the agency, either. A licensing authority that notices the forest after it is gone is a smoke detector installed in the ashes, and its deadline still leaves until October 23 for the digging to stop. The small municipalities, by the conservationists’ account, were outmatched before the first tree fell. The forest did not have a legal department. The data center does. I am keeping the cardigan. Fill the notebook. Then count the stumps before anyone lets you count the jobs.
Sources: The Guardian, Oct. 6, 2026 (updated Oct. 7); BBC News, Oct. 6, 2026; CNBC, Oct. 7, 2026.
— Theo Ashford-Lindström
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