aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Daylight Savings Time

I’m glad to have it, but I don’t buy it:

Congress is on the verge of passing a new energy bill this week that would make daylight-saving time last from mid-March to early November. (It now runs from April through October.) The sponsors of the daylight amendment say it will save the country at least $180 million in energy costs.

Slate looks at the savings in daylight savings time:

Springing forward has its trade-offs. When you set your clocks forward, you exchange morning daylight for a later sunset. Later sunsets tend to get people out of the house more in the evenings, which could lead to an increase in driving (and gasoline use) and a reduction in the use of household appliances. And if daylight time extended too far into the winter, more people would wake up before sunrise and turn on the lights. Government research from the 1970s suggests that extended daylight-saving time produces a modest but significant energy savings of about 1 percent. A British experiment with extended daylight time in the late 1960s failed to produce much corroborating evidence.

It’s good for business:

Under Reagan, an extra month was added again at the urging of business groups (like sports equipment and barbecue grill manufacturers) who expected increased profits with longer days.