The House Energy and Commerce Committee has approved an amendment to extend Daylight Saving Time by an additional two months (March-November rather than the current April-October.)
According to Transportation Department estimates, such a change would save 20,000 barrels of oil a day.
Is making such a change really going to make a big difference in energy consumption, though? The only real saving is in less usage of lights, but lights aren’t what’s taking a large amount of electricity. Also, it’s not really “saving” daylight since all it’s doing is moving morning hours to the evening.
Should we go to a longer DST? Should we go to DST year-round?
Seriously, however, I do remember that the U.S. and some other countries went to DST year-round during WWII and even went double-DST during the summer months.
But ultimately, does it really make a difference if we go DST year-round? We could (arbitrarily) go three hours ahead, but then we would also have businesses start opening at noon instead of 9:00.
The argument against full-time DST is that during the winter months (Dec-Feb) kids will be going to school in the dark, and therefore are at greater risk of being hit by cars.
Personally, I think year-round DST might have benefits we haven’t even thought of. If people are out in daylight longer, it could reduce SAD.
O.K., daylight savings is when it stays light later, right? I always get it mixed up. Anyway, that would be cool to have that all year.
I never understood why school has to start so damned early anyway. Just change the school schedule in the winter months instead of changing the whole countries’ time.
You can’t mess with the school schedule! It follows a time-honoured practice without which we’d have chaos. Why, if we let school start later in the day, we’d have to have school in the summer when the kids are supposed to be helping their parents bring in the crops!
I live east of my workplace and just as nature gets the direct sunlight out of my eyes on my trip home, government puts it back into my eyes for another 3 weeks.
Back when my kids were small and dinosaurs (or at least the ones made in Detroit) ruled the Earth, I hated DST because the kids weren’t at all tired at their 9 PM (8 PM Real Time)bedtimes and were sluggish and sullen at their 7 AM ( 6 AM,RT)wakeup time.
I’m sure that parents who both work day shift and come home just as worn out at 6 PM DST as they did at 6 PM standard time don’t like it that their children are much more active and full of energy at 6 than they ought to be.
I’d love to go to Daylight Saving Time all year long. Switching the clocks back and forth causes sleep-cycle disturbances and ultimately hurts productivity. I think that schools generally begin too early anyway, so I don’t think Standard Time being enforced on all of us, to protect the few students who walk to school in relative darkness for a few cold winter months, is the best way to deal with this problem. But, if we cannot change to having DST year-round, I wouldn’t mind two more months of being able to see a little sun after work is over.
I’ve always (or at least recently) wondered why we can’t adjust schedules according to the amount of daylight available. Spending most of the winter not seeing the sun (up to work before sunrise, and home after sunset) seems barbaric, and is, at least for me, a form of slow torture; by the end of January I cease functioning as a human being.
Hmm, that’s what…a 0.5% savings? For two months out of the year? Aren’t there better ways to conserve energy? I’m kinda curious as to how they came up with the numbers anyway…it sounds like someone’s trying to pull a fast one. But I’m not so curious that I’m gonna track 'em down and check the calculations.
I live in Indiana, in a part of the state where we don’t do DST (grew up in NJ, so it’s not like I haven’t experienced it). I like it that way. At any rate, for an opposing viewpoint read this. I can’t testify to the benefit of either view, however, and so would just go with my preference – which is to take the whole country off DST.
I’m a night person, so I personally hate DST. It essentially takes an hour out of the summer nights I love so much. I don’t have a practical reason for not extending it, though if we’re going to do it for nine months, we should just do it all year.
There have been pretty good studies done saying that students do better when the school day starts a little later. I don’t know if the effect would be permanent–having had a different job every month for the last five years, I know that the definition of “early” changes. But this has always seemed like a more sensible solution to the problem of sending kids to school in the dark than changing the damn clocks.
I personally hate the time changing back and forth. It might have made sense at one time but I can’t see it doing any good now. It’s not so bad every six months (still sucks) but having to do it every nine then three months makes it even more out of wack. I think this whole energy savings is all just hoo-ha. Part of me can’t shake the feeling that it’s all part of the one-world government conspiracy to keep the working man and woman off balance.
And what about the calendar makers? Won’t someone please think about the calendar makers?
Seriously though, or at least semi-seriously, I’m in favor of it. I love Daylight Savings Time. This time of year I can leave the office and still have some decent photography hours left before bed.
