Good intentions? The very best! Scientists and engineers all agreed that all those tires clogging up landfills could be dumped into the ocean to make artificial reefs for marine life. What a wonderful idea!
Millions of old tires were barged out to sea and dumped offshore, with the unqualified approval of scientists, engineers, and even the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The idea was received with enthusiasm by tire companies, one company even marking the public inaugural of the great project with a gold-painted tire dropped into the sea from a company blimp hovering overhead.
That was more than three decades ago.
Today, the tires are still there, but the hoped-for coral reefs and the fish are not. The tires form dismal, barren areas of sea floor, or have broken loose from their moorings and are washing up on our beaches.
There is little marine life clinging to the would-be reefs; instead, the sad truth is that where thousands of tires have come to rest against natural reefs, “they are blocking coral growth and devastating marine life.”
“They are a constantly killing, coral-destruction machine,” said the coordinator for a federal group organizing a clean-up program. The state of Florida alone proposes to spend over $2,000,000 to remove the tires, and estimates say it will cost as much more over a period of at least four years. One engineer called it, “A white-walled, steel-belted monument to good intentions gone awry.”
Have you had any wasted good intentions in your life? Have you perhaps said, “I’m going to live a better life,” or, “I’m going to turn over a new leaf,” or even, “I’m going to be a Christian (someday).” Good intentions all, but don’t waste your time! ACT now! There just might not be another time for you.
Probably no one, now living, remembers the old copy books that school children once used to practice writing. One sentence, to be copied over and over, was, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Only too true. Good intentions have never saved one soul from hell, never lifted one soul up to heaven.