We’re Burning Daylight!

Isn’t that bad for the climate?

I think about Daylight Saving Time constantly.

Is it this weekend? Next? Will it shorten the shelf life of my bananas? How do I convince my cat she should sleep an extra hour?

The anxiety and fear brought on by the semi-annual time change are destroying my life!

Ok, I really only think about it twice a year.

Usually the day after the time changes.

Sometimes someone will mention it to me in advance saying something like, “hey, the clocks change tonight,” or “we lose/gain an hour tonight” or “I have no personality let’s talk about clocks.” I treat these comments as I do conversations about the weather, something I have to pretend to care about until you shut up and let me go back in my office and do introvert things.

I seem to be in the minority though as the subject of Daylight Saving Time is once again political. Hey, what isn’t? At least we’re not fighting a war over it. Yet.

As usual, when I see enough headlines about something I can’t help looking into it. Ok, that’s not entirely true, I remain blissfully ignorant of Survivor and Taylor Swift’s recent marriage. However, since DST - the time acronym, not the Doctor of Sacred Theology one - isn’t about stupid people - at least not directly - I had some questions. These could all fall broadly under the question “why should I give a f*ck?” but as I need to write more than - stops to count - 206 words and my mother doesn’t like swearing, I’ll address these questions one by one:

1. Why and when did DST - the time acronym not Deep Somatic Therapy - start?

2. Why do people want to end it?

Yes, there are probably more questions, like “did it do what it was supposed to do?” but do we really care? Since when is efficacy part of a political debate? Just pick a side, ignore the facts, and fight!

Why did we start this stupid thing?

The first question could be restated as “what idiot is responsible for this mess?” I like this framing as it allows us to blame someone, which, in today’s era of hyper-partisanship, drives views. And I’m all about the views.

Surprisingly, while Benjamin Franklin invented electricity, he did not invent DST - the time acronym not Dexamethasone Suppression Test... although he probably didn’t invent the second one either. He did jokingly suggest in a 1784 essay that Parisians could save candles by getting up earlier. There are, however, two people who were prominent proponents of Daylight Saving Time:

• George Vernon Hudson (New Zealand, 1895), an entomologist, suggested shifting clocks forward (initially by two hours) to gain more evening daylight for hobbies like insect collecting after work.

• William Willett (UK, 1907) proposed it in his pamphlet The Waste of Daylight. He argued people wasted too much valuable daylight by sleeping through summer mornings and that it would provide more evening sunlight for recreation (he was a keen golfer), improve health through outdoor time, and reduce artificial lighting use.

Broadly speaking, we can therefore blame golfers, people who like bugs, and those who want everyone to get up early. In other words, weirdos.

Note: Despite enjoying early mornings, I am not a weirdo. At least not for that reason. I like to get up early, because it’s my quiet time and frankly, I don’t want anyone else doing it as you’ll likely ruin it for me by loudly collecting bugs and golfing.

As is often the case, we also get to blame the Germans. They were the first to try it when they adopted it in 1916, hoping to conserve coal by reducing artificial lighting in the evenings. The expectation was:

• Less electricity would be used for lighting.

• Fuel consumption would be reduced.

• Industrial efficiency during wartime would rise.

Britain adopted it shortly afterward, followed by Canada and the United States. These countries claim to have done it for the same reasons as the Germans, but likely did it because of Germany’s reputation as a trend setter. We need look no further for proof of this than the fact that we are all currently reading this article while wearing lederhosen.

So comfortable and practical!

If the Germans like it, why mess with it?

Yes, the Germans make great clocks. Or maybe that’s the Swiss. Don’t ask me; I don’t see color. But even the Germans are powerless in the face of Big Farmer.

Yes, the farmers did not like city-folk messing with their clocks. Everyone has a boss, and the farmers follow the orders of their livestock. Nobody wants to wake up to a pissed-off cow/chicken. Livestock, I am told, lack arms, which hinder their ability to wear watches. This, in turn, requires them to set their schedules using sunlight. A sudden one-hour shift confuses them, leading to stress, anxiety, too many cattle not reporting for work on time, and roosters going off half-cocked (yes, I just went there).

There was also the teeny tiny problem that the predicted energy savings were minimal. Normally, environmentalists would still push for this despite how much it annoys everyone else, but they wished to focus on only one annoying proposal at a time and chose plastic straws.

You might be thinking, “certainly there must be more to this. Is there anything else we need to talk about to make an informed and educated decision?” There are two parts to this answer:

1. “Informed and educated?” Did you miss the part when I said: “pick a side, ignore the facts, and fight!”?

2. I want the article to be about 1000 words and I’m sitting at 945, so there is one other minor issue with DST. It leads to:

   1. more heart attacks

   2. more strokes

   3. more workplace injuries

   4. more traffic accidents

Of course, I’m talking about the time acronym, not Deep-Sea Trawling.

Although that one is probably pretty dangerous as well.

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