Opinion
Daylight wasting time
Looking for a print version?
Simply use your browser’s ‘Print’ command and a printer-friendly document will be generated automatically.
Also by Zach Stern:
- Conservative betrayal (April 14, 2005)
- Freedom and responsibility (May 5, 2005)
- For everything else, there's bankruptcy (March 17, 2005)
- The revolution continues (March 3, 2005)
- Voter apathy with reason (February 17, 2005)
Sharing tools:
E-mail this article:
A friend of mine almost missed her Kaplan LSAT class. Needless to say, she was pissed.
How many of you cursed when you woke up this past Sunday, only to find an hour of your day strangely missing? My guess is that my friend and I weren’t the only ones.
As you are all no doubt well aware by this point, it’s time to “spring forward” as the United States enters Daylight Savings Time once again. First established in the United States shortly after World War I, DST has become engrained into the American (and, perhaps on a grander scale, even the human) consciousness. But need this be so? A law’s presence in the books for roughly a century does not necessarily make it any more or less justified — just old. DST is a decrepit law whose intended purpose is muddled with ambiguity. Its perceived benefits are outweighed by the tangible costs it creates.
If tradition alone is no reason to continue enforcing unnecessary laws, then the time has come to re-examine the federal government’s undue intrusion into our sleep schedules.
Historical arguments in favor of DST generally rest upon a few now-faulty premises. One is the supposed benefit DST would provide in relation to farmers, giving them an extra hour of sunlight with which to work. Nevertheless, farm animals might be more libertarian than science would have us believe, refusing to acquiesce to the government’s artificial manipulation of our clocks as they continue to go by their own, natural schedule. Because of this, those in agriculture have long been opposed to DST, as it needlessly complicates their business.
Another argument commonly used is that it helps businesses. By giving consumers an extra hour of sunlight after work, they can use the sunny weather to go shopping. While there may be slight benefits from delaying sunset an hour, this rationale alone is not reason enough to justify such intrusion.
The primary argument, however, and the most convincing for the time in which the law was enacted, was that of energy conservation. Give people an extra hour of sunlight after they get home from work, and the aggregate savings in energy costs due to unused electricity would be fairly large. At least, it might have been in the ’70s.
Today’s energy problems are vastly more complex, requiring solutions greater than simply subtracting minute percentages of electrical usage. The real culprit in this energy crisis is not simply usage but our addiction to the fossil fuels that have moved the machinery of our civilization forward in the modern era. These, as well as the political realities associated with acquiring these fuels, are far more pervasive problems whose solutions require more than merely saving an hour of daylight. With more and more electrical equipment occupying space in people’s homes whose usage has little to do with the setting and rising of the sun, particularly the widespread growth of air conditioners, such a small amount of energy savings is hardly worth the costs.
And what are these costs? Beyond simply stealing an hour of your sleep for one night, some have argued that DST creates a ‘sleep deficit,’ in fact contributing to an increase in automobile accidents immediately following the “spring forward.” In addition, the costs involved with keeping track of this change are numerous, as well as the fact that individual states can choose to opt out of DST anyway. Indiana suffers from this confusion, with neighboring counties being under different times, hurting the ability for businesses to interact with one another by increasing the costs.
Confusion, at the very least, ought to be reason enough to halt this laughable policy. But sadly, tradition inevitably creates inertia — why change something when it’s “always” been that way. Even though it has not.
The perceived benefits of DST policy are extremely slight at best, non-existent at worst. We may get our hour back in the fall, but it shouldn’t be taken away in the first place. Ironic, then, is the fact that when the government acts to try to save time, it really just ends up wasting it. All too telling, but not very surprising.
Zach Stern (zstern@badgerherald.com) is a senior majoring in political science.
23 Comments | Leave a comment
Leave a comment
Herald Blogs
The Beat Goes On
Fans of Waits will not be disappointed
Muckrakers
Report: Barrett to make decision by the end of the week
Extra Points
Top Classified Ads (view all)
SPRING SUBLET: 1 bedroom in 2 bedroom at the Aberdeen. Rent negotiable. Email arkramer@wisc.edu
GENTLE WOMEN...THROUGH the lens of Douglas J. Nesbit, newly released book now available for holiday gifts! www.gentlewomen.us
Which friend did you wake up with? VerStandig?
I have an idea. Let's set the whole damn calendar ahead one year every four years. It's the only way I'll graduate on time and it'll save me and my parents a bundle on tuition.
Whadaya say?!
I like DST because it stays light out so much longer in the day. Honestly, it's not hard to make up for an hour of lost sleep--it's not like my sleep schedule is that consistent anyway: 4 hours here, 2 hours there, maybe 12 hours on the weekend. And has far as not knowing about it, and almost missing and LSAT course or whatever, well that's just your and your friend's fault of not being informed. If you don't even know when DST is going to be, how the hell are you going to make it as a lawyer?
If your friend almost missed her LSAT course the only one she should be pissed at is herself. Of all the obstacles in life, DST is definitely not one that's that difficult to deal with. Grow up.
I don't here anyone complaining the bars are open an extra hour that night in the fall.
Also, I'm just curious if there is any proof that the DST switch and its "sleep deficit" actually causes accidents. There are a whole host of other potential circumstances. For example, in many places across the country, typical spring weather, including very heavy thunderstorms, seem to being around the same time as the DST switch.
Is this a real article or a late April Fools joke? What waste of space.
Good Lord! The Goverment is controlling TIME!!! There is no hope for our liberties NOW!!!
Get over yourself, Zach. Libertarianism is one thing. Whiny inconvenienced rambling is another.
-WN
Congress may extend DST to early-March to late-November:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/04/07/daylight.saving.ap/index.html
Year-round DST in the 70s became problematic because of how late the sun would rise, causing safety concerns over children walking to school in complete darkness.
Dear Zach,
Nobody cares. You are a moron.
Sincerely,
A concerned reader
Libertarians also want to eliminate zip codes and area codes. Let the free market decide where 53705 is, for all I care!
Also, didn't Benjamin Franklin "invent" daylight savings time to the benefit of farmers?
Wow! You're in college at Madison and can't remeber to set your clock forward for daylight savings? That's pretty sad. As for daylight savings - when you get out into the real world it's nice to have the extra daylight after work to do outdoor activities and exercise.
He's pissed because with more daylight he cant smoke pot and be a hermit at night as much. Damn sun glares when he plays video games
Here's my solution, just have everyone set their clocks back 30 minutes, and forget about "springing forward" or "falling back" ever again. It's the best of both worlds.
PS: Zach, you must have really been short on ideas for an article to write about something as silly as this.
The struggle of a college student. Between this and Cynthia's bitch-fest about people talking in class....
"Beyond simply stealing an hour of your sleep for one night, some have argued that DST creates a 'sleep deficit,' in fact contributing to an increase in automobile accidents immediately following the "spring forward.""
This is balanced out by less accidents in the following months because it gets dark later. Someone from the NYT reported on this, but if you don't like their evil evil liberal slant, I guess you can ignore the data. That's right: data. Actual numbers, printed on the page.
In the same article from the Newspaper of Record, they showed exactly how much money was saved for the lowered energy consumption. Again with the whole numbers-backing-up-points thing.
Could you possibly show some data as to how much it costs businesses to account for DST? Because that would be swell, seeing as how it's pretty hard to believe that this hurts businesses at all. I can see it now:
Businessman #1: "Sorry I missed the big merger meeting- I thought it was an hour later."
Businessman #2: "Yeah, that Daylight Savings Time thing is really hard to keep track of, what with it being at the same time every year and all."
Businessman #1: "I know what you mean. Just because I'm a paid professional doesn't mean I have the cognitive capacity to set my clock an hour ahead. So how much did we lose in this merger deal?"
Businessman #2: "Eleventy billion dollars."
[Businessman #1 hangs self]
Also, is it really Zach Stern's belief that the ONLY policy to curb energy consumption in this country is DST? His point that there are other ways to deal with our energy needs is true- but it doesn't take away the fact that DST helps just a little bit. If it helps, why NOT?
But the thing that really got to me with this was the whole business idea. Capitalism and market forces seem to be the answer to everything. Now I'm no tea-swilling baseball-hating Commie, but having the government tell us what time it is seems better than the Invisible Hand setting our clocks ahead, no?
Mindless crap! I just wasted more time reading this article than DST will ever cost me.
It's Daylight "Saving" Time, not "Savings"
http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/c.html
small steps toward conservation add up to large steps, Zach. The only valid point you made in the paragraph about energy policy was about the prevalence of air conditioners. You also say that the costs offset the benefits, yet do not even attempt to quantify either, making the reader ask 'How can you be so sure?' Surely your example of a sleep deficit has an obvious counter in the fall where the time change allows people more sleep and hence (to follow your reasoning) fewer traffic fatalities. It is disappointing that you do not consider any of these points.
Seriously, did you forget you had an article to write till 3 am last night and had to come up with something fast? This was the most pointless peice of crap ever to appear in the Herald, and that's saying a lot when baumgardner writes for the paper.
Zach, instead of acting all pissy and bitching about bullshit reasons why DST is a bad idea, why don't you just accept that you fucked up? Maybe next year you'll remember to look at a calendar, read a newspaper, or watch the news at some point. Hell, you write a column for a newspaper -- granted it sucks, but still -- and you can't even be bothered to know when DST starts?
Here is a little simple math Zach, something your article could have used to actually prove a point.
About 270 million people in the U.S. x 1 extra 60 W light bulb per person for one hour = 16.2 billion Watts, or 16.2 million kWh.
Now, there are about 3600 kJ per kWh, so that gives us 58.32 billion kJ of saved energy.
The highest quality coal will give you about 33,000 kJ per kg of coal. This means that per day, about 1,767,272 kg of coal are being preserved because of DST just based on lightbulb usage. This may seem insignifcant compared to the total usage of coal per day, but after a while it might add up to where you are actually saving a day or two of power a year, and that is not insignificant.
The fact that you aren't a flamming liberal makes it all the harder for me to post this comment, but the article was horrible. Try going to bed an hour earlier. If you can't find the time, the next time you have the urge to write a column that bad, do us all a favor and take a nap.
stupid idiot