Death to DST

My children have been difficult the past two mornings. The reason: Daylight Saving(s) Time (DST). My two older children have always been early risers. We put them to bed at 8 PM so we can get a couple of hours of relative quiet before going to bed ourselves. By 6 AM, they've been in bed for 10 hours, and are ready to be up. The past couple of weeks, they've started to stay in bed until 6:30, and Sarah and I have been thankful for the extra time. But then, the scourge that is DST reared its ugly head. The reversion back to Standard Time meant that the light level my kids were used to experiencing at 6:30 AM, they were now experiencing at 5:30 AM. So 5:30 rolls around, and my kids naturally think they are allowed to be up, so - reasonably - up they get. I try to tell them they still have to go by the clock, but they are young enough to intuitively know that clock time it artificial. They seem to say "The Sun is up, and I feel great - let's go." And who can blame them? But no, I have to tell them that they must shackle themselves to those glowing red digits, and do whatever they say, not what the sun and their bodies are telling them.

And why are we doing all this wrong-headed clock-changing? DST allows us more time to enjoy the lingering daylight of precious summer evenings. I get that. I enjoy that. But I'm a bit of a morning person, too. Early morning light has it's own sweetness and solitude that's interrupted in favor of prolonging evenings. Are evening people more important than morning people?

I've heard that DST provides an energy savings -- that the reduction in electric-light usage in the evening outweighs the corresponding increase in morning usage, and thus we the people reduce our energy consumption by as much as 1%. From what I've read elsewhere, however, that 1% figure is based on 1970's information. It's possible that air conditioning is more widely used now than in the 1970's, and that prolonging evening daylight actually increases the use of air conditioners, offsetting any gains in reduced electric lighting.

In contrast to the possible minor energy savings, think about the enormous cost associated with changing all those clocks. How much time do you spend on this chore? 15 minutes? At www.census.gov, they say there are about 104 million households in the U.S. If you multiply 15 minutes by every household in America, you get 26 million hours! And we change the clocks twice a year. That is an enormous opportunity cost. I don't know about you, but I've got other things to do. This doesn't even count all the clocks at work that have to be changed. And congress just passed a resolution changing the dates during which DST will be in effect next year, so all those computers that automatically adjust? Nah, uh. Plus, think of all the engineering and administrative time that goes into changing bus schedules, train schedules, airplane schedules, delivery times, keeping different software programs speaking to each other, etc.

I'm sick of changing my clocks. I just can't decide whether I should revolt or move to either Hawaii or Arizona. Any state that opts out of DST is okay in my book.

This could have been written better, but its just my blog, okay?

The picture if from CNN.