Time change is an awful joke we play on ourselves. As much fun as staying up an extra hour is in the fall or how restful that one extra hour is to spend wrapped in slumber, we certainly pay for it in the spring.
This past weekend, we collectively went through the annual ruse of shifting of time by leaping forward an hour. Now, for the next week or three, we will be wandering around in a haze, waiting for our minds and bodies to catch up with the lie we just told ourselves that the time had miraculously changed overnight. While it may be nice to have some extra light when we return home, the process of changing sleep patterns and routines throws everything and everyone off track.
So why do we do it?
National and local studies don’t tend to agree on the electricity savings. In general, it is thought that electricity savings are a bit less than 0.5%, but these studies are from a few years ago. The energy landscape is changing.
Many opponents of daylight saving time point to flaws in the studies because they only examine electricity usage, and in some cases just lighting loads, while heating and cooling demands seem to increase slightly, and people tend to drive more with the extra hour. As we are moved to more electric vehicles, this increase in use will start to affect the electrical readings more, instead of being obscured through studies having to examine gasoline usage. The end result seems to point to very little, if any, savings.
While the United States implemented some form of daylight saving time during wartime starting in 1918, it has come and gone a few times. Now, it is time for this jumping around to end.
There are competing theories regarding energy usage, mental health impacts, and children’s learning effectiveness on whether going to a permanent standard time or permanent daylight saving time would be best. Let the experts weigh the pros and cons of each and choose one, and stick with it.
If nothing else, could this be one topic that the pundits on the left and right could actually agree on? Perhaps this one topic could be the force that starts cooperation within the political parties. One can hope, but we would be content to settle for just leaving our clocks alone.
