Time For A Change?
For most Americans, Daylight Saving Time amounts to little more than a twice-annual ritual of clock adjustment. For others, the tradition is either a boon, a grating inconvenience, or simply another annoyance of modern life.
One early critic, Canadian novelist Robertson Davies (1913-1995), noted his objection to Daylight Saving Time for the record in his 1947 novel, The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks.
"At the back of the Daylight Saving scheme I detect the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy and wise in spite of themselves," Davies wrote.
Critics suggest that constant clock-tweaking is doing little more than messing with our internal body clocks, adding yet another source of stress. Many Daylight Saving Time [DST] detractors suggest that the frenetic, sleep-deprived pace of our daily lives makes it hard to make the adjustment from standard time. Some claim that traffic accidents rise shortly after "spring forward," which suggests that loss of sleep leads to sloppier driving.
DST also takes flak from farmers, who have to be up at dawn regardless of what the clock says, and concerned parents, who fear that their children are in danger during dark winter mornings. Some physicians also have gone on the record, noting that the shift from longer to shorter days may contribute to the onset of a kind of depression called seasonal affective disorder, or SAD.
The question then is, how does DST – proposed as a joke by Benjamin Franklin and introduced to the U.S. as a wartime conservation measure – apply to modern Americans?
The answer is that conservation is still a good idea.
California Energy Commission spokesman Bob Aldrich notes that since Daylight Saving Time reduces the period between sunset and bedtime by one hour, "...Less electricity would be used for lighting and appliances late in the day. We also use less electricity because we are home fewer hours ..."
That's in addition to the estimated 2 million barrels of oil saved each year, and roughly one percent shaved off of the country's electricity usage each day DST is in effect.
Thus far, DST may mess with our clocks and our sleep schedules, but it's one law that may pay its own way.
Written by Sean Wolfe