Day Light Savings Reminder (DST)
Have you noticed that no one really talks about daylight savings time anymore? You just depend on your iPhone to automatically put you in touch with the rest of the country's schedule. Well, here's a friendly reminder that daylight savings's end is upon us. You may recall two expressions devised to aid you in properly setting your clock: "Spring Forward" and "Fall Back"? Well since its Fall, we're going to fall back.
Set your clock an hour earlier. Daylight savings starts on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November. This coming Sunday, clocks will be set back one hour at 2:00 a.m. local daylight time, which becomes 1:00 a.m. local standard time (according to the US Naval Observatory). Note that if you live in Arizona, most of your state won't follow this policy.
The dates for time change have fluctuated over the years according to government policy or to promote energy conservation or even spending (oh yes capitalism strikes again!). It all started back in 1784, when Benjamin Franklin, a very observant man, noticed that because the sun set earlier, people were having to use more candles to light their workspace. He suggested that we could all just change our waking and sleeping hours to work with the natural light of the sun, thereby conserving our important resources.
In 1973, Congress enacted the Emergency Daylight Saving Time Energy Conservation Act in response to the Arab oil embargo in an effort to cut down on oil consumption. The Department of Transportation says the equivalent of 100,000 barrels of oil each day was saved. According to Michael Downing author of "Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time," in an interview with NPR.org, this is a fallacy. Mr Downing states that the opposite is actually the case in our modern age. It turns out that when we have more daylight in the late hours of the day, we actually tend to go out into the world rather than work or stay home and read by sunlight. And when we go out, we generally drive in our cars and go to stores or restaurants rather than jog in the park. Apparently, the petroleum industry has been a big fan of DST since the 30's because of the additional revenue it brings in. And here's another fun fact: the candy industry has been one of the biggest lobby groups for daylight savings. Prior to 2005, Halloween occurred after we set our clocks back. The idea was that if kids had another hour to trick or treat, they would have more time to get more candy! Since 2007, with inception of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 , Halloween has been included, thus a big win for candy corn (and maybe the corn industry too hmph?). There's some food for thought.
And for the most surprising bit of information that I 'd like to share with you....Congress set aside 150 million dollars to study the impact of daylight savings time. As if 124 years since we first adopted DST, wasn't a great enough case study. And the results? The US Department of Energy released its report to Congress with the main determination that extending DST saves less than 0.5% of total electricity usage over the extension period. Most studies however, including one on Indiana (Indiana didn't adopt DST until 2006) by the Vox organization (http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/2663), concluded that
"A final component of our analysis is the calculation of costs associated with the estimated effect of DST. We find that the policy costs Indiana households an average of $8.6 million per year in increased electricity bills. We also estimate social costs of increased pollution emissions due to the residential response to be between $1.6 and $5.3 million per year."
So, now that daylight savings is coming to a close, let's all be a bit more aware of our energy expenditure. Get a bike and go for a ride to your friend's house -- enjoy the changing of the leaves. Turn down your thermostat and get your snuggie or maybe its time for a winter girlfriend or boyfriend to keep you warm...however you choose to save our important resources, do so. And remember that age-old adage "waste not, want not".
Here's a tock to remind you:
1 Comments:
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