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The Nation's Pulse
DST: Forgotten, But Not Gone
Government can’t even get the time right.
What’s “DST” you say? How quickly we forget. It’s Daylight Saving Time. It’s been gone only a couple of weeks and unless you haven’t changed the clock in your car, this semi-annual nuisance is not even a memory.
It was first proposed by a New Zealander in 1895 and its cause taken up by a Briton a few years later. The United States first adopted it in 1918. It was widely believed at the time that President Woodrow Wilson wanted it so he could play golf into the evening hours. It has been with us in various configurations ever since. They are not simple. An encyclopedia description of “How It Works” takes up two pages.
Since 2007 in the U.S. it has begun the second Sunday in March and ends the first Sunday in November — nearly two-thirds of a year. Before that it began the first Sunday in April and ended the last Sunday in October. The reason for this “mission creep” is the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which assumed that expanded DST would save large amounts of electricity. It has not.
Back in 1975, the U.S. Department of Transportation said that DST could reduce the nation’s electricity usage by one percent during March and April. The next year the National Bureau of Standards found there had been no significant savings.
An earlier start to DST in California in 2007 had virtually no effect on electricity consumption that year. In 2008 a study of Indiana data before and after that state adopted DST in 2006 found that DST had increased residential electricity usage by up to four percent (caused by extra afternoon cooling and morning heating). Overcall added cost to the state’s household was estimated at $9 million.
In 2008, the U.S. Department of Energy concluded that the 2007 U.S. expansion of DST (to the current schedule) had saved all of one-half of one percent of electricity usage. Bureaucrats, it seems, never learn.
For 35 years the federal government has been chasing this chimera of reduced electricity usage (presumably to reduce the use of nasty old coal to produce it), with the only results being the semi-annual irritation of millions of citizens, children going to school in the dark, hens taking weeks to adjust their egg laying, and some computers and electronic equipment that don’t adjust automatically. There is some evidence that auto accidents increase and productivity decreases during the spring and fall transitions.
Who likes Daylight Saving Time? Some merchants, especially those in shopping centers that are open until 9 p.m. Golfers and those who long for after-dinner touch football games or pick-up soccer matches like it.
The costs far outweigh whatever benefits there are, so what’s to be done about it? Recently, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev concluded that DST is just not worth, so he’s ordered it abandoned across all nine (until recently, 11) of Russia’s time zones. Let us follow Russia’s example and get rid of it. Alas, given the nature of politics, Congress may have to bend some to the lobbying of merchant and golfer groups so, as a fall-back position, cut DST down to size, say, from May 15-September 15.
Mr. Hannaford lives in California, but most of his business is done in the Eastern time zone, so he wears a wristwatch with two time settings on it.
About the Author
Peter Hannaford was closely associated for a number of years with the late President Reagan, beginning in the California Governor’s office. His latest book is Presidential Retreats.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (37) | Leave a comment
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Shamus| 11.15.10 @ 6:17AM
It doesn't really save any daylight. That's just the government screwing with you.
kentek| 11.15.10 @ 11:59AM
Oh, yeah? That extra hour of sunshine burns up my
grass!
:-)
Tomas| 11.16.10 @ 10:07PM
Having sun go down before 6pm is not fun. I would certainly welcome a single, unchanging time zone system, but let's make it the DST schedule; then call it Standard Time.
As for Indiana, adding DST was done for businesses. Moving here from a DST state, it was GREAT not having to set our clocks twice a year. The drawback was Indiana rocked between Eastern Time and Central Time. This made it difficult for businesses to operate across state lines. Indiana added DST to make Indiana business clocks on par with everyone else's clocks.
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Bill L| 11.15.10 @ 6:47AM
It sure was a whole lot easier with analog clocks.
Appleby| 11.15.10 @ 6:59AM
I am still waking up on DST and tired enough to be ready for bed on DST. Officially changing the *clocks* in my home has not affected the clock in my body in any way.
some guy| 11.15.10 @ 7:40AM
so it doesn't save money, so what?
this guy obviously doesn't play softball
leave DLST alone, please
some guy| 11.15.10 @ 7:42AM
....also, good luck sending your kids to pitch dark bus stops in the morning...
(guess he doesn't like kids, either....)
Brubaker| 11.15.10 @ 10:37AM
Since daylight saving time moves clocks FORWARD, it means that children are arriving at morning bus stops EARLIER than they would under standard time. If your concern is dark bus stops, you'll want to stick with standard time.
JFGalt| 11.15.10 @ 7:50AM
As all govt programs they become juggernauts and cannot be stopped for any reason.
Ned| 11.15.10 @ 2:00PM
As with all government programs, they don't do what they purport to do, and impose unwarranted and unconsidered costs on the public without their consent. Unlike most other government programs the costs and inconvenience are realatively trivial, but a pointless pain in the butt is still a pointless pain in the butt.
Curly Smith| 11.15.10 @ 8:11AM
First we had Captain Planet and turned the clocks back one hour. Next we'll have Cap'n Trade and we'll turn the clocks back two hundred years and permanently shutter all coal-fired plants. Then everything will be right with the cold, dark and hungry world.
Pecos Pete| 11.15.10 @ 8:22AM
The Russians do some things a LOT better than we do. Congratulations to them for their refusal to observe DLST.
canuckistani| 11.15.10 @ 3:10PM
Like drinking?
Louis Jenkins| 11.15.10 @ 8:45AM
It is just another reminder that we do not even control the time of day. The government steps in every spring and fall and tells us what to do. And we don't save any energy. Leave the clocks alone one way or the other. I can't get any rest.
Mark Harl| 11.15.10 @ 8:54AM
When we swich to DST in the spring we burn more energy in the morning instead of evening (I'm thinking of lights only for simplicity); obviously it's just the opposide in the fall. A "compromise" might be to push our clocks forward just 1/2 hour from standard time and leave it like that year-round. But I suspect that this won't happen because of the "all or nothing" attitude so prevalent in government today. Besides, I'm just a citizen w/o a college degree, so what do I know?
Big Tony| 11.15.10 @ 9:03AM
Lobby your state government to get rid of it. The federal government will never get rid of it until the majority of states stop doing it. There is no DST in Hawaii or AZ. I lived in Hawaii for a year and loved not having to go thru the hassle and the burden of being a zombie for a couple of weeks every year while my system adjusts.
My method of coping is to wake up 15 minutes earlier starting 3 weeks in advance then every week adding another 15 minutes then when DST starts I only have to get up 15 minutes earlier than the week before. For me that beats getting up an hour earlier. I don't seem to have any problems with getting the hour back in the fall.
Rocin| 11.15.10 @ 9:11AM
Let's just go to year round DST. We won't have irritating time changes, and the golfers will be happy.
dennis2j| 11.15.10 @ 9:31AM
My brother-in-law told me he doesn't like DST because he goes to work in the dark and comes home in the dark. I feel as though I'm in the dark most of the time anyway, so I'm going to go to Alaska, study grizzlies, and learn to hibernate.
Prov31wife| 11.15.10 @ 9:48AM
Has anyone seen our children lately??? We get them up in the dark, send them to schools who have now taken PE and other important programs away due to funding. We bring them home on the bus only to find that the sun is going down within the hour. "That's right, honey, sit back down in front of the TV because there is nothing else you can do to stimulate yourselves. Or, you could go up to your room and text all your friends. Then come down for dinner. Sorry your teenage bodies are starving for rest, we need you to wake at a totally different time now, AND do well in school." Do you think you could do that, hmmm?
Stan Redmond| 11.15.10 @ 10:04AM
DST is just stupid.
Banning regular old Edison lightbulbs is stupid.
Just two examples of how government can touch something mundane and screw it up for EVERYONE. If you like the DST, go to work an hour early and take off an hour early for your golf game. Don't force 300,000,000 Americans to change their lives every 6 months and waste countless hours resetting clocks.
Emilio Lizardo, Ph.D| 11.15.10 @ 10:25AM
DST is a gift to the physically active, a scarce commodity in this country. Lazy louts weighing in as you have above, leave this alone
Brubaker| 11.15.10 @ 10:42AM
So you're unable to adjust your own schedule? Perhaps you're afraid of the dark? Maybe you don't have lights where you live?
For the rest of us, just leave the clocks alone. Clocks are nothing more than scheduling devices. It's not necessary to change millions of clocks so a few incompetants won't have to adjust their own schedules.
Mark| 11.15.10 @ 3:40PM
I don't adjust my schedule; my boss does.
Occam's Tool| 11.15.10 @ 11:30PM
Emilio, I do not understand your advocacy of this. After all, didn't you say "History is made in the Dark!"
(Another Buckaroo Banzai fan.)
JimP| 11.15.10 @ 11:10AM
So much fuss about DST. It's arbitrarily set regardless of whether it's "saving daylight" or "standard". The arbitrary standard goes back to the 19th century and the railroads. As for saving energy costs, you will get hit one way or another for no net gain regardless of the name put on the time. For example, up North in the winter it is dark longer, and thus colder, per 24 hour period than down South so you will have higher heating bills than in say Jacksonville, FL. Down in JAX you get hit with higher cooling bills since it's warm longer. They also have more daylight in JAX in winter, so DST or ST makes little difference for going to school etc. The whole 'kids going to school in the dark' canard is a matter that applies primarily to Northern states. On DST they go to school in the dark. On ST they come home in the dark. I know, I lived up North for a time while in school. Either way, little Johnny needs a flashlight at some point.
Since 'time' is arbitrary, I prefer 'DST'. Either way, we should pick one and stick with it. I hate the adjustment my body clock has to make twice a year.
kentek| 11.15.10 @ 12:04PM
There are 5 time zones on Earth that are on the half-hour. One is Venezuela. (Also 100 years behind the times)
And, some years ago Congress legislated Alaska one hour closer to the mainland.
West Houston| 11.17.10 @ 3:03PM
Venezuela was not a half hour time zone when I lived there but it would not surprise me to learn that Hugo has changed that, too. Heck, it would not surprise me to learn that he changed January to Hugomonth.
Perusha The Offender| 11.15.10 @ 12:32PM
DST is the change only an idiot like Obama could believe in, and there’s no hope of changing IT, given the nature of the political system in this country.
Do you believe in predestination?
Back in the Middle Ages, scientists convinced the powers that be in Europe to get the calendar in sync with the movement of the Earth around the sun.
So, they had to lop some days off---so, if it was January 1st, say, they made the next day January 21st.
Well!!! A huge mod of religious fanatics, believers in predestination all, gathered before the government to protest, because they assumed that their government had STOLEN the leapt days from their lives!
DST is hubris run amok, and nemesis always follows---hello today.
canuckistani| 11.15.10 @ 3:27PM
...and idiots like Joe Barton R-Tex, the bill sponsor, and yea votes from Demint, Coburn, Thune, Sessions and Cornyn.....
I do not believe in predestination, 'cuz it means no free will to debate sharpies like you.
Citizen Jerry| 11.15.10 @ 3:06PM
I seem to remember it was just a few years back when Congress changed the dates (again) for when we went on and off DST in order to "save energy." Another stunning success story.
Bob Miller| 11.15.10 @ 3:23PM
If our watches knew our coordinates and altitude, we wouldn't need standard time, either.
Jim Wilson | 11.15.10 @ 5:37PM
I live in AZ, and thankfully the farming lobby here was too strong in them thar days to allow DST to sink its wasteful hooks into us. 3/4 of the year we're with CA time, the other 1/4 we're on with UT and CO etc. I work with people in lots of states and am constantly having fun with time zones and DST, despite being on Sane Time all the time. Everyone who likes DST because it gives them an 'extra' hour of daylight should realize that's it's just one more little shackle drawing you towards slavery. But that's okay. You love Big Brother.
Fred Z| 11.15.10 @ 6:55PM
The mighty power and majesty of the law invoked, to be enforced at gunpoint if needed, so that softball dude can avoid starting his game an hour earlier by the clock, which might require softball dude and friends to start work earlier or get an hour off.
Anyone supporting a law needs to ask themselves if it is an important enough law that they are willing to have swat teams forcing their neighbors, their families and themselves to obey.
Occam's Tool| 11.15.10 @ 11:28PM
Up here in Northern Minnesota, where the nights are long in the winter and short in the spring and summer, it actually makes sense. It makes no sense in Las Cruces.
cats1cowboy| 11.16.10 @ 12:12AM
I'm 60 years old. As a child, I was told that the time change was so that rural children would be safe and not have to walk to the school bus stop in the dark and possibly get hit by cars. Being from an rural town, I never understood that, because we had, oh yeah...STREET LIGHTS! and in 8 years of walking to the bus stop I saw maybe 5 cars. Years later, I read that the time change was made to accomodate back-yard bbq-ers and was an $800 million boon to the whole bbq industry because "people bought more grills, hot dogs, ribs, paper plates etc, etc, etc, because they could stay up longer". Then the electricity savings theme came along. As Colonel Potter used to say, "Horse puckey".
Chris| 11.18.10 @ 5:04AM
The Sun comes up in the East and sets in the West, and no man made scheme is going to change that. Remember "It's Not Nice To Fool Mother Nature"[think AWG] and only a band of fooools will attempt to do so.
Changing a clock will never regulate when the sun comes up or when it sets. If it doesen't work for the hour ahead or behind whats next? 2,3,4 hours. Get rid of it and use a Sun Dial. Also Ben Franklin was the guy who proposed DST in America for the free markets!
Christian Louboutin | 6.23.11 @ 5:50AM
It was first proposed by a New Zealander in 1895 and its cause taken up by a Briton a few years later. The United States first adopted it in 1918. It was widely believed at the time that President Woodrow Wilson wanted it so he could play golf into the evening hours. It has been with us in various configurations ever since.