Daylight Saving
thegoldeneternity
Veteran
In most all of North America and Europe, we observe Daylight Saving Time. This practice (as you probably know) involves setting our clocks ahead one hour in the spring and then setting them back one hour again in the fall.
I was thinking today, and I realized that I couldn't for the life of me think of why we even bother to do this. Out of curiosity, I did some research. There is a vague explanation often given that daylight savings is "for the farmers." I remember hearing this one as a child. It turns out that this is false. Farmers actually lobbied against DST when it first came about.
In my research, I learned that the intention of DST is to save energy by adding one more hour of natural daylight to our day, thus reducing the amount of artificial lighting that would be used, thus saving energy.
Benjamin Franklin proposed an idea similar to DST in 1784, suggesting that if people got out of bed one hour earlier, they would reduce candle burning in the evenings by one hour.
DST was first implemented by Germany during WWI, in an attempt to save energy resources which could then be used for the war effort. Some other countries followed suit. After the war ended, many of these countries stopped the practice, only to restart it again during WWII.
When WWII ended, the practice continued, however it led to a lot of confusion, especially with things like train schedules. In 1966, the US passed the Uniform Time Act, to end the confusion.
It was theorized that implementing DST would save 1% of our energy use. Studies that have been conducted have found this to be untrue. It has been concluded that the energy we save in the summer by using one less hour of artificial lighting is offset by the energy we spend using one more hour of air conditioning. Overall, it is a wash.
So, given the years of evidence that daylight savings doesn't actually save any energy, why do we still do it? Maybe no one ever bothers to think of changing it back, since it has been in place since 1966 (and practiced well before that). Maybe people just like having one more hour of sunlight in the summer evenings.
One theory of why we haven't done away with DST is that oil companies (with all their money and power) would never allow it to happen. One extra hour of sunlight in the evening results in people being more motivated to spend that time out of the house, which means that people will be doing more driving and burning more gasoline. This results in increased profits for oil companies. Everything comes back to corporatist conspiracy theories, doesn't it :-) I'm sure they would fight the change tooth and nail if they think it would reduce their profits.
So that's that. I found it interesting so I thought I would share it with y'all. Any thoughts?
In case you want to read more, I got much of the information from this article:
Comments
We're stolen an hour once a year, we're given it back a couple of months later.
The light I don't spend in the dark evening, I spend in the dark morning.
Every time that happens I have exactly the same thought: why do we still do it?
I guess, if you're blind it really don't matter much....
Frankly, not being a big-wig in the world of Industry and commerce, I never really give it much thought at all....
"In Winter, I get up at night
And dress, by yellow candle-light.
In summer, quite the other way -
I have to go to bed, by day!
I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown-up people's feet
Still going past me in the street.
And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?"
R. L Stevenson
It is still a major concern in school districts in the northeast where kids were standing along the road when the sidewalks and shoulder were covered in snow and ice -- in the dark -- waiting for school buses.
Interesting consideration! Although it seems to me that the logical solution is to change the school schedule rather than to change the entire population's clocks :-)
I have heard that there is evidence that suggests that it would be highly beneficial for children to start the school day later... that the sleep they would gain from sleeping in would be much more beneficial than going to school so early in the morning... that sleeping in is actually a natural thing for children to do and is consistent with their growth and development, rather than something that only lazy kids do.
Yes, that has been suggested. One block to that is the number of high schoolers who have after-school jobs.
I don't know what the best answer is.
Of course not: letting children wake up at 10:30 is AFAIK, unprecedented, so we don't really know do we?
What an odd statement.
I dunno...It was pretty normal in our household, when my kids were teens...in fact, I would say 10.30 was still pretty early for them....
I like daylight saving. An extra hour of light in the evening to run around with the kids outside in summer. Also, it would be daylight at 4.30am in my part of the world without it which is far too early IMO.
But I was referring to the discussions of school start times, which -- at least in the school systems I was involved in -- were starting high school around 9, instead of 8 or earlier. Our district debated it for years, but the crunch always came with trying to distribute school buses to cover all the elementary, middle, and high schools at reasonable times. In our district, the same school buses that dropped kids off at high school at around 7:20, then dropped off at middle schools at around 8, and elementary schools around 8:40. The solution of buying more buses was no possibility due to financial considerations. (And, BTW, another part of the equation was keeping younger children off the sidewalks and roads in the main part of the rush hour in our suburban district).
And then there was the retort that came up continually in meetings when a parent would say that his or her high schooler shouldn't have to get up a 6 a.m. to get ready to school...and the response was, have them go to bed an hour earlier.
the same reason why we do a lot of stupid things which should be changed.
the people with the authority to do so , are reluctant to do it.
if you have worked in a big organisation, you will know
that when something goes wrong, the 1st question asked
is whose idea was this.
nobody wants to be the one responsible when things go wrong.
if it was not your decision, how can you be blamed?
art of survival 101.