As most people no doubt noticed given that they were
robbed of an hour of sleep recently marked with the beginning of Daylight Savings
Time in the United States, Canada, and several other countries and territories
in North America. For morning people, Daylight Savings is a drag, depriving
them of an hour of tranquil morning light. But for others, "spring
forward" brings with it the promise of long, languid afternoons and warmer
weather.
Brace Yourself: Daylight Saving Time Is Here. Huffington
Post Like millions of other Americans who have slogged through an uncomfortably
cold winter, we're looking forward to the change of season. But Daylight Savings
Time is an annual tradition whose time has passed. In contemporary society,
it's not only unnecessary: It's also wasteful, cruel, and dangerous. And it's
long past time to bid it goodbye.
Daylight Savings has been an official ritual since 1918,
when President Woodrow Wilson codified it into law during the waning days of
World War One. Nowadays, its ostensible purpose is to save energy: One more
hour of sunlight in the evening means one less hour of consumption of
artificial lighting. In 2005, President George W. Bush lengthened Daylight
Savings Time by a month as part of a sweeping energy bill signed that year,
citing the need to reduce U.S. dependency on foreign oil.
It's Time to Kill Daylight Savings
But does Daylight Savings Time actually make much of a
difference? Evidence suggests that the answer is no. After the Australian
government extended Daylight Savings Time by two months in 2000 in order to
accommodate the Sydney Olympic Games, a study at UC Berkeley showed that the
move failed to reduce electricity demand at all. More recently, a study of
homes in Indiana—a state that adopted Daylight Savings Time only in 2006—showed
that the savings from electricity use were negated, and then some, by
additional use of air conditioning and heat.
Daylight Savings Time isn't just unnecessary. It's also
wasteful, cruel, and dangerous.
The simple act of adjusting to the time change, however
subtle, also has measurable consequences. Many people feel the effects of the
"spring forward" for longer than a day; a study showed that Americans
lose around 40 minutes of sleep on the Sunday night after the shift. This means
more than just additional yawns on Monday: the resulting loss in productivity
costs the economy an estimated $434 million a year.
Daylight Savings Time may also hurt people who suffer
from Seasonal Affective Disorder, depriving them of light in the mornings.
"Our circadian rhythms were set eons ago to a rhythm that didn’t include
daylight savings time, so the shift tends to throw people off a bit,” Dr.
Nicholas Rummo, director of the Center for Sleep Medicine at Northern
Westchester Hospital in Mt. Kisco, New York, told HealthDay News. The
switchover to Daylight Savings Time is also linked to an increase in heart
attacks as well as traffic accidents.
Those of us who have lived with Daylight Savings Time our
whole lives might feel disoriented without it. But the millions of Americans in
Arizona, Hawaii, and territories like Puerto Rico, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin
Islands have survived just fine without it. Not to mention the billions of
people throughout Asia, Africa, and South America.
It's said that Benjamin Franklin first proposed a version
of Daylight Savings back in 1784 as a way to save candles. This, no disrespect
to old Ben, should tell us how silly and obsolete the tradition has become. President
Obama—and leaders elsewhere in the world—should do the sensible thing and scrap
it.
Daylight Saving Time Is America's Greatest Shame
This article was originally published at http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2015/03/time-to-kill-daylight-savings/387175/?UTM_SOURCE=yahoo
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