in Check It Out, Green, Politics, Rant

Daylight No-savings Time?

WRAL Weathercenter’s Nate Johnson posted about daylight savings time, which goes into effect this Sunday. Ah, daylight savings time: one of my favorite whipping boys. If there’s one thing that raises my government-as-nanny hackles, daylight savings time is it.

Benjamin Franklin is credited with conceiving daylight savings time (DST) as a way to save on candles. While candles may have been all the rage in Poor Richard’s day, it may be safe to say that we use energy quite differently nowadays. The energy required to shift one’s biological clock to match clock time is quite expensive, too, but not so easily measured.

Nate points to an MSN article claiming that DST does not actually save energy but in fact wastes it. A scientific study [PDF] looked at the effects of the DST adjustments made during the 2000 Sydney Olympics. It revealed that energy use spiked when DST went into effect. The thinking goes that workers return to a hot, stuffy home earlier in the day they will inevitably crank the air conditioners.

I thought it interesting that Australia was used in the study, as I vividly remember the daylight savings time fiasco I witnessed first hand during the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne.

At any rate, I’m glad people are finally looking at real data to justify daylight savings time benefits rather than untested conclusions. I personally think DST is a waste of time (so to speak) and energy. It robs us of morning daylight in favor of evening daylight, that’s all. An argument could be made that it impacts Americans’ health as they might not be so inclined to exercise outdoors in the hot summer evening hours rather than the cooler morning hours.

At any rate, I’m on the scrap-DST bandwagon and look forward to reading David Prerau’s book Seize the Daylight. Maybe the world can stop torturing itself. At least twice a year, anyway.

  1. No dice. Why the hell do I care if it’s light at 4:30am during the summer? I’m asleep. Much better to have it light out until 8:30 or 9, so I can do stuff outside.

  2. Yeah but sunlight sets your body’s circadian clock. Four-thirty won’t seem so early if the sun’s up. It’ll just be a number then.

  3. ok, I’m gonna nitpick a little…just have to! 🙂

    Benjamin Franklin suggested something similar while participating in every American’s favorite pasttime…making fun of France. It was a satire that he mentioned it.

    William Willett actually proposed it in 1907 and the US did not adopt DST till 1918.

    Some variation of DST can be traced way back to the Romans so lets not burden poor ol’ Ben as the brains behind the adoption of this outdated idea.

    However, I do agree…get rid of it. Or just permanently institute it! Either way, I’m down with that.

  4. Will the times I have to get to work and come home reset with my circadian clock?

  5. Actually, I read that owners of big golf courses lobby heavily for it. Also, it extends brush cutting into the evening hours for those who like to do that sort of thing.

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