Daylight Savings Time Arrives Early

Thanks to a new law pushed by Congressmen Edward Markey (D-MA) and Fred Upton (R-MI), the US moved its clocks forward an hour this week-end. That is three weeks earlier than usual. And it will end a week later, in November. It is alleged that this will save energy, reduce crime and decrease auto accidents. Of course, if that’s so, why move the clocks back during the darkest part of the year, when saving daylight would really be useful?

The theory behind the energy savings is dubious at best. If the sun is up later in the day, so the thinking goes, people won’t use as much electricity in the evenings. However, the nation pays for it in the mornings. Children get up in the dark to go to school, and the lights have to come on or the little dears can’t find their socks, their homework or their brown bag lunches. Moreover, the amount of energy saved is doubtful. Professor Michael Dowling of Tufts University has studied the matter in some detail, and he said, “We have not saved a lump of coal” since tinkering with the clocks began in 1918. After all, if there’s more daylight, people drive to the malls and shop later.

This year, things have been even dicier. The changing of the clocks in March rather than April has loused up a great many computers. For those who use Outlook or some such program to keep track of their appointments (hint: if you can’t remember it, it isn’t that important), the 9 am reminder of the 10 am meeting would actually turn up at 10 am. That’s a problem if one has to travel to the meeting. Worse, banking and legal e-mails and transfers may have the wrong time stamp, leading to all sorts of trouble. To unwind that mess, Microsoft and other software companies spent numerous man-hours writing patches that had to be installed, followed by computers being re-booted. That is the very definition of waste.

Some time ago, this journal suggested that the time change should not happen by moving the clocks forward 1 hour but by moving them back 23 hours and having another Saturday during that week-end. Policymakers have obviously failed to grasp the unbridled genius of such a proposition, so one moves on to Plan B.

The entire problem stems from trying to force the clock to suit the natural rhythms of the sun and the tilt of the Earth’s axis. It seems much more plausible to switch human behavior to fit the environment (Darwin would call it an adaptation). If one wants more light, get up an hour earlier, leave work one hour sooner, close schools at 2 o’clock rather than 3. What’s lost? Sixty minutes, the amount of time it takes to get through a single episode of “CSI.” And maybe in November, the clocks can be moved back half an hour, and then left alone forever.

© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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