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Daylight savings time: the root of all our problems
Paul Sassone
dst in 2012
Daylight savings time began at 2 a.m. Sunday, March 11.
Daylight savings time will end at 2 a.m. Sunday, Nov. 4.
As of 2 a.m. Sunday, Aug. 5, there will be 13 weeks of daylight savings time left in 2012.
Updated: August 1, 2012 4:36PM
I don’t know about you, but when something goes wrong the first thing I do is look for someone to blame.
The year 2012 most certainly has gone wrong. It has been an inferno ever since March.
This has to be someone’s fault. I can’t blame the horrible heat on global warming because then I would have to shoulder some share of the blame.
No, the real culprit is — you.
Back in 2005, when Congress got the stupid idea of extending daylight savings time, the U.S. Department of Transportation conducted a poll on whether we Americans like daylight savings time.
We were bombarded with propaganda that daylight savings time would save on energy and that it must be a wonderful idea because it first was thought of by Benjamin Franklin. That’s right, Benjamin Franklin, the original American Genius who invented everything except re-sealable freezer storage bags.
If it was good enough for Ben it was good enough for us. Yes, we thundered, increase daylight savings time.
I was always opposed. More longer days, I said at the time, means more hotter days, not to mention more people shouting outside and blaring radios in their homes and cars.
But, as usual, Congress did not listen to me and passed a bill that extended daylight savings time by approximately a month. So, starting in 2007, daylight savings time has lasted 238 days a year, approximately 65 percent of the year.
Since then, no one has been able to demonstrate that expanded daylight savings time has resulted in saving energy, or anything else good for that matter.
That sounds right to me. If days are longer, and thus hotter, we use more air conditioning, which uses more electricity. And if we are out and about in the bright evenings we use more gasoline.
Farmers never much cared for daylight savings time, either. Chickens aren’t adept at telling time, so they have trouble re-adjusting their egg-laying schedules twice a year.
And now that the earth seemingly is transforming itself into a fireball, daylight savings time may not seem like such a hot idea (pun intended).
Congress could change all this, but most likely won’t.
Daylight savings time ends on the first Sunday in November.
Maybe by then the temperature will drop below 85 degrees — until the second Sunday in March when daylight savings time starts all over again.
