Daylight Saving Time: Why should the government mess with our clocks?

The Associated Press

Times change.

Featured Topic | Posted 38 weeks 2 days ago

Daylight Saving Time: Why should the government mess with our clocks?

Don't forget to "Spring forward" this weekend. Daylight Saving Time starts at 2:00 a.m. Sunday. And if it feels earlier this year, that's because it is. When Congress passed an omnibus energy bill in 2005, legislators expanded Daylight Savings with the goal of saving energy.

But Daylight Saving Time has costs as well as benefits, notwithstanding the loss of a precious hour of sleep. Should government regulate time? Does Daylight Saving Time work as advertised? Or is the time change more trouble than it's worth?

Ben likes: Unhappy hour

John J. Miller/National Review Online

We're also informed that Daylight Saving Time helps conserve energy, apparently because people arriving home when the sun is still up don't switch on their lights. Didn't it occur to anybody that maybe they compensate by switching them on earlier in the morning? Moreover, people who arrive home from work an hour earlier during the hot summer months are probably more prone to turning up their air conditioners. According to researcher Michael Downing, the petroleum industry once was "an ardent and generous supporter" of DST because it believed people would hop in their cars and drive for pleasure -- and guzzle more gas.

Joel likes: D'oh!

Kate Sheppard/Gristmill

This just in: Pushing daylight savings time up a few weeks might have not only not saved us any energy, we might have actually used more.

According to a study released this week by a Canadian energy analyst, while overall energy use saw little change, gasoline consumption rose, perhaps as folks took advantage of evening sunlight for leisurely drives.

"The major assumption was that the hour [of daylight] that you take away in the morning, people were sleeping," Canadian economist Peter Tertzakian told the Globe and Mail. "But that's not necessarily true -- they get up and have to turn the lights on to make breakfast; you haven't gained anything."