Daylight savings time has been tried in different places and times. The current practice in the U.S. began during World War II, and became standardized by the Uniform Time Act of 1966. Of course, the idea was to save energy, and to benefit from long evening daylight hours (and wasn’t it fun to miss bedtime because everyone was still playing outside!)
Surprisingly, studies have shown that daylight savings time doesn’t really do much to save energy. Time changes even hurt some people. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine argues for eliminating clock changes and has found that standard time provides the best match with the human biological clock. Health problems, including a higher risk of heart attacks, have been linked to “springing forward.” Children waiting in the cold for a bus and anyone with an early morning commute would not enjoy the darkness in winter as they start their day if we have year-round daylight savings time.
Confusing the issue is that we all love the longer days and associate them with daylight savings time. It is so nice to wake up in daylight, have our day at work or school, and then still have an extended evening with natural light. What a treat it is to have long summer days. Few think about the longer hours of daylight having nothing to do with how we set our clocks. We have longer days because of the time of year.
The shortest day in the northern hemisphere is Dec. 21 – winter solstice. Locally, the sun rises at about 7:30 a.m. and sets about 5:10 p.m.. Earliest school bus pick up times in our area are around 7 a.m. If we kept to daylight savings time, the sun would rise at about 8:30 a.m.. Our kids would be waiting at bus stops, or otherwise traveling, more than an hour before the sun came up. The kiddos will be so cold! Many of us would be going to work too before the sun came up. Of course, the evening would continue until after 6 p.m. – but still not going to give us a long, pleasant evening. Winter will still have short days, and cold weather.
It seems easy to agree that we should not have a time shift twice a year – it clearly isn’t good for health and doesn’t save meaningfully on energy (or anything else that I could find.)
The more difficult decision seems to be should we follow standard time (with noon being about the middle of daylight hours) or always shift (following daylight savings time). The downside of starting school and work before daylight is meaningful.
How does that compare to having the sun set later in the afternoon? Obviously, different people will have different opinions (although remember that the researchers who study this systematically say that it is healthiest to follow standard time.)
In any case, let’s get away from wanting to keep daylight savings time simply because the long days are so great. Winter is going to be darker (and colder) regardless of what we call the time. It’s simply amazing that our current legislators can’t even decide if we should keep the clock consistent throughout the entire year – and use natural time or daylight savings time. It should be an easy issue to discuss, not bound by political party, and with substantial science to help guide decisions. Isn’t it amazing that our current legislators haven’t been up to the task?
