LZ Granderson: How to be better stewards of the nation into our fourth century

Of all the wonders that American ingenuity has produced over its first 250 years - from shrinking the globe via the airplane to improving the hamburger by adding a slice of cheese - perhaps our deepest imprint on modern society was made in Detroit.

Henry Ford, the son of an Irish immigrant, was born in 1863, built his first car in 1896, and by the nation's sesquicentennial in 1926, had turned his Model T into the best-selling car in the world.

In the early days, it took more than 12 hours for Ford's workers to produce a single vehicle. Then in 1913, using a series of conveyor belts, Ford introduced the world's first moving assembly line. That cut production time down to 90 minutes per car. Ford's innovation made it cost-effective to mass produce automobiles and became the template for other products. More importantly, during World War II, the auto plants were reconfigured for weaponry, ultimately producing a third of all U.S. war materiel.

By the mid-1940s, the G.I. generation had lifted the Motor City from outside the Top 10 in U.S. population into being the most important metropolis in the world.

And after the war, their children basked in its glory.

Their grandchildren saw cracks in the foundation.

Everyone else grew up in the rubble.

Sometimes literally.

Not far from where I lived as a child in Detroit stood the crumbling Packard Plant, a 3.5-million-square-foot behemoth that at its peak employed more than 40,000. Opened in 1903, the plant closed its doors half a century later. Over the decades, developers balked at the cost of reimagining the 80-acre wasteland. The decaying architecture was more than an eyesore. The community was trapped in an unrelenting loop of structural decline, with abandoned plants undermining the potential to grow the tax base needed to revitalize the area.

Rex Lamore, who runs the community and economic development department at Michigan State, coined the term "domicology" to describe the science of a building's life cycle.

"At the end of the useful life of a structure," he asked in his research, "who ultimately has the responsibility for the removal?" Often, that ends up being the people who grew up in the rubble. The places where taxpayers are already stretched thin.

This mirrored what happened in the South a century before.

In 1876 - as America was turning 100 - the country was the top supplier of cotton in the world. Leading the way was Mississippi, which had thousands of cotton gins in operation across the state. Today, only 33 gins remain, and the state's top export is corn.

However, fragments of the infrastructure that once drove the country's economy can still be seen decaying on abandoned farmland, leaving behind persistent poverty counties that still fit inside the map of old plantation geography.

It is not unlike what generations in Appalachia experienced, when coal companies would upturn land, excavate and then leave communities to pick up the pieces.

In Bayou Corne, Louisiana, there is a 37-acre sinkhole left behind. A salt cavern collapsed in 2012, forcing residents to sell their homes at a fraction of their previous value. During legal proceedings it was discovered the drilling companies knew of the potential dangers as far back as 1976, as America was turning 200, but drilled into the caverns anyway. And when the smell of methane gas forced longtime residents to flee, the companies responsible were largely able to walk away.

Different centuries.

Different industries.

Different geographies.

And the same 250-year-old pattern in which capitalists build infrastructure, extract wealth and then take off, leaving communities to absorb the cost of abandoned structures.

It is, inarguably, our history.

My point is not to condemn the pattern but to implore that we learn from it. Capitalism, by its nature, requires perpetual growth and often physical movement toward new opportunity. We also know that good times in an industry don't last forever - although that abandoned plant on the east side of town might. And the same dynamic that drove auto manufacturing away from downtown Detroit to the suburbs and eventually overseas is the one that dethroned King Cotton in the Mississippi Delta.

And it is the same force that's currently driving the construction of data centers across the country.

Much of the criticism is focused on the ecological and economic implications of today. In fact, hundreds of state and local bills have been filed this year addressing energy costs, water usage and utility rates.

Generally, however, there is nothing legislatively requiring builders to set aside money for the inevitable teardown and cleanup. Meanwhile Elon Musk and others are actively developing orbital computing infrastructure. Based on history, when that transition happens, or some other technological leap not yet envisioned, the terrestrial data centers of today will likely become the Packard Plants of tomorrow. And the same communities that are debating restructuring their utility grids and water systems to accommodate data centers in 2026 will be wondering what to do with that large empty building down the street when America turns 300 in 2076.

Which is why Congress should apply what we know about the nature of capitalism and pass legislation requiring companies that build above an established square footage to post a third-party decommissioning bond held by an independent trustee prior to breaking ground. And these safeguards cannot be self-bonded. Not after a series of bankruptcies between 2012 and 2016 in the coal industry resulted in more than $2 billion in unsecured self-bonds.

No - if an industry has money to build, there should also be money to take down.

Planning for a foreseeable future, using a means of accountability that is already widely accepted, is not radical. It's wisdom.

For example, the telecom industry requires tower bonds to make sure unused cell towers don't erode and fall on people. A bond for data centers, in conjunction with an independent oversight agency, would cover deconstruction, environmental remediation of power and cooling infrastructure, and site restoration. We may not know what artificial intelligence will ultimately bring 50 years from now, but we do know what happens to large buildings that go unused.

When America turns 300, the grandchildren of today's decision-makers should not have to pass by empty server farms the way past generations drove past abandoned cotton gins and auto plants. At this stage, we know better and should want to begin to leave a new record on this land. One showing that its people behave more like stewards thinking of tomorrow, as opposed to locusts consumed with only today.

YouTube: @LZGrandersonShow

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