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Saving Daylight
In 1784, Ben Franklin wrote a satirical paper to a French journal extolling the financial benefit to be obtained by getting the French to arise at dawn and thus save vast quantities of money on candles. He suggested taxing shutters, rationing candles, firing a cannon, and ringing church bells at dawn to awake the public (did he intend something like the muezzin dawn call to prayer in Islamic nations?)
In 1918, to follow the lead of Germany in World War I (Germany originated daylight saving time in 1916, ostensibly to save fuel for the war effort; this kind of thinking may have had something to do with the outcome of the war?), the United States, under President Woodrow Wilson, initiated daylight saving time. This started in April and ended in October. Only in the progressive era could this have begun in the U.S., as, of course, progressives likely thought they were actually saving daylight. Maybe Wilson, scholar that he was, found Franklin’s paper and thought Franklin was serious. If so, it would have been the only idea of the founders that Wilson liked. Otherwise, he thought they were all crocks.
The main question was why progressives chose to save daylight in the summer, when they had plenty of it, rather than in the winter, when it was in short supply. But then, that’s pretty much the way progressives think. To wit, President Joe Biden thinks that spending a trillion dollars costs zero dollars. Of late, Republicans have tried to improve on the progressive idiocy by extending daylight saving all year round. Sen. Marco Rubio has championed this effort (Florida has the least need to save daylight of any state in the contiguous U.S. states — go figure). Rubio has had the chutzpah to title his legislation the Sunshine Protection Act. As if sunshine needed protection. Yes, yes, I know, Florida is the Sunshine State, but still … I thought it was the Earth that needed protection from global warming, er, “climate change.” Now we’re going to fix the sun as well? Again, progressives probably think we can achieve such a thing. Alas, such as Bill Gates is busy figuring out how to protect the earth from sunshine! Which is it that we need? Protection of sunshine, or protection from sunshine? Of course, with less sunshine there will be less photosynthesis, thus less incorporation of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) into plants, fewer crops, and perhaps mass starvation, and since there will be less removal of CO2 from the atmosphere, we would likely have global warming resulting from Gates’ plan to prevent global warming. If Gates’ scheme to prevent global warming actually worked, it would likely lead to global cooling, maybe freezing, if freezing hits a hockey stick moment like warming. Gates would then likely concoct some idea on the use of geothermal energy by tapping the Earth’s core to prevent us all from freezing to death, which would be fruitless if we had already starved to death from crop failures due to lack of sunshine and global freezing from his fantastic scheme.
But Rubio does have a point. This bouncing back and forth of the time is actually killing people. Some medical studies have suggested that the physiologic changes required to get the diurnal cortisol rhythms back in sync with the actual sun time are sufficiently stressful (some people experience the time changes as severe prolonged jet lag) that there is an uptick in fatal myocardial infarctions, strokes, and such. Yes, only the vulnerable would tend to be affected, and we could hasten their demise by admitting them to nursing homes filled with COVID-infected patients to see how long they last. But that seems a little Draconian.
When Wilson first imposed daylight saving time, farmers were adversely affected. They were not amused. They were already up at the crack of dawn with the cock crowing and didn’t need anyone to tell them when to work. They went to work as soon as there was sufficient light to permit them to work. And there were a lot more farmers then than there are now. Congress got off its duff and banned daylight saving time, with enough votes to override Wilson’s veto (Wilson didn’t want to be led around by the nose by a bunch of farmers — they were as deplorable to progressives then as they are now, but he lost on that one).
Of course, the entire rational for daylight saving time would not exist were it not for the progressive ideas that government should dictate the workday, start time, end time, amount of hours worked, etc., etc. Consider that famous U.S. Supreme Court case, Lochner v. New York. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. just about blew his reputation as a progressive over that one. Imagine, letting bakers negotiate their own contracts for working hours. How could Holmes have been so obtuse as to allow that? That meant there would be less impetus for bakers to unionize, cause labor problems, and use their leverage. (People unable to purchase their daily bread because the bakers were on strike?? Things like that started revolutions, such as the French Revolution — just what the progressives envisioned to fundamentally transform America into a workers’ paradise. Indeed, I think I would have been in the vanguard of the mob at the Bastille if I woke up one day and couldn’t get my hands on one of those marvelous French baguettes.)
Some states (New York) continued to use daylight saving time. Others did not. The situation was sufficiently confusing that boats, trains, and planes traveling between states lobbied for some uniformity. Of course, the federal government claimed the prerogative to intervene — interstate commerce, after all — and produced another act in 1966. Something about the Uniform Time Act. Now if a state wants to change and not use daylight saving time, or use more DST, that state has to get clearance from the U.S. Department of Transportation, I am led to believe. And states can opt out of daylight saving time, but they cannot opt out of standard time by making DST permanent. It requires an act of Congress to change daylight. As they say, Congress thinks its crowing causes the sun to rise.
Wikipedia has the remarkable line: “Ancient Civilizations adjusted daily schedules to the sun more flexibly than DST does … “
The mother of all NSS statements.
Nothing says “progressive” like mandating sunrise and sunset. Telling the heavens how to behave, for the benefit of progressive man. Vaccine mandates that won’t stop COVID are a mere triviality in the progressive pantheon of cosmic policy.
Published in General
I’ve been radicalized on daylight savings time. No DST! No time zones! Burn it all down!
This is one of those things I don’t understand all the harrumph over. It doesn’t bother me at all.
I had a 13 hour shift last night because we got an extra hour in the middle.
Its an ill wind that blows no good.
Sounds like environmental mitigation to me.
Here we go again! This comes up every year. I’m with you, Nanocelt. The changing back-and-forth of the clocks is just nonsensical. I can’t believe that such a stupid idea has lasted this long, I guess out of sheer inertia. Rubio’s idea is even more absurd. If you’re going to fix the time standard as unchanging (which I would like to do), then why purposely make the numbers out of sync with the natural motions of the Earth? Why not declare Noontime and Midnight to be exactly 12:37 and 18 seconds just to make things more interesting for the astronomers?
I like daylight savings time, but it needs to be drastically shortened. I say first weekend in May to last weekend in September . . .
I pretty much believe that time zones and Daylight Saving Time are outside of Congress’ hands. The Constitution says that Congress can set the standards of weights and measures, which I would consider as meaning what the length of a second, minute, and hour are. But it doesn’t say Congress can enforce a system of weights and measures, which I argue means they can’t require metric, for example. It might also prohibit them from telling you what the current time is wherever you are, though a state most certainly can do that. I’ll admit that I’m less certain about this than about the application to the metric system, because it’s less clear to me whether establishing when 12:00 is in a location is a matter of a standard of time or a system of time. So maybe they really can.
Nevertheless, Daylight Saving Time rests on the dubious premise that we’ll use less electricity by shifting what the clock reads in the Summer. Although I love the long daylight of the Summer afternoons, and so I don’t totally mind DST in that way, the fact remains that the Summer already has later sunsets, and this system just exaggerates the natural effect. As an astronomer and a conservative, I like my clock to have a close connection with what Nature is doing. Noon should mean the Sun has reached its highest point and is mid-way through the day. Permanent DST is silly and permanently divorces our clocks from the natural rhythms they’re based on.
Great posts
I think the government should make 4AM be called 10AM so that we will all get up early but can sleep in late.
Actually, I think that the US should be divided up into 150 or so time zones 10 minutes apart. That way if you live on a town on the border of a time zone, but shop at a wallmart 15 miles away in another time zone, you don’t have to keep resetting your watch. You just say that that you’re 10 minutes slow.
When we were living in Shreveport, LA during the (very hot) summer of 1995, we had thirty straight days of over 100 degree weather. Of course daylight savings time got the blame. One woman wrote in to the local newspaper to complain that “this daylight savings time is burning up my grass!”
People can be very protective of their marijuana.
It does. And everyone bitches about it two Saturdays per year, and then they forget about it by Monday morning. So it must not really be that big of an issue, or they’d be bitching about it at other times, too.
I chalk up the dislike of it to urban dwellers or people who spend most of their lives under artificial lights, . . . or southerners who don’t experience the dramatic changes in sunrise/sunset times that we in the north do.
Leave it alone. The twice-yearly clock-shift is good for us.
If we didn’t “spring ahead,” sunrise in the summer would be close to 4:00 am. (And the birds outside my window would start waking me up at 3:00.) And if we didn’t “fall back,” sunrise in the winter would be close to 9:00 am. It’s a much more severe swing for us northerners. This time shift makes it less swingy and easier to cope. (Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.)
I will fight anyone who tries to end it.
This is one issue where I simply cannot get on board with even my conservative brethren and sistren who think we need to end it. I am alone on this issue.
For those of us who simply do not get enough natural light in the winter and work in windowless offices, the time shifts at least allow us to get some light during morning commute (because it’s already dark when we leave the office). Morning light is more important for proper functioning during the day than evening light. If we didn’t have that morning light, the “seasonal affective disorder” would be even worse.
I am alone on this issue, but I will FIGHT to the DEATH to keep things as they are. Because if they took away my beloved DST, it might just kill me.
To each his own!
Perfect solution: Northern states do the time-change stuff, southern states don’t!
It has traditionally been farmers who disliked daylight savings time. Dairy farmers especially didn’t like it, at least in the days before robotic milkers. Their cows need to stay on the same schedule, or else production drops. But it made it difficult for farmers to have any sort of civic or social life, because other peoples’ lunch times and evening meeting times were effectively changed.
Waaah. Humans rose and retired with the sun for millennia before DST was invented. You are alone because you are simply wrong. We now know that Monday after the time change has more fatal accidents than any normal Monday. A bit more on that Tuesday, too. And the electrical lighting savings are now swamped by excess air-conditioning energy consumption, so DST fans can’t even claim it is for the “climate”.
Find a second-shift or flex-time job. Or buy some bright blue lights. Or relocate. SAD has multiple solutions.
But more lives would be saved, since you are the only one who would die. Do it for the children!
You should change your moniker to “DrewTheDramaQueenInWisconsin”. Sheesh.
I’m worried by how long people need to stay awake in that second graph. Perhaps we should ban clocks?
How about just getting up earlier if you like morning light. The clock is not stopping anybody from doing that.
Yes, I saw the lefty media tweeting that out, too. But that’s in the SPRING, when you lose an hour. In the fall when you gain an hour, there is a reduction in accidents. So it evens out.
Also, “Drama Queen”? Don’t be a dick, Phil.
I ain’t getting up at 3:00 am!
I mean it when I say I will fight. I mean guns and bombs and everything.
DST advocates, to me!
Why not?
That would be DrewInWisconsin, Drama Queen to you! But to me he’ll always be an Oaf. :-)
No, the increase in fatalities in the spring is substantially more than the slight decrease in the fall. And that latter is barely significant (small Canadian study, apparently).
Ok, that was a bit over the top. My apologies.
Because it’s 3:00 am! I would think that would be obvious.
That’s often when I go to bed…
I hope I’m not the only one who saw the Phil(ip K) Dick reference…
Unless I wasn’t supposed to…
But Daylight Savings Time forces you get up earlier anyways. They just call it a different number on the clock. It fools you into thinking you are still getting up at the same time. Would it help if I woke you at 3:00 AM and just called it 9:00 AM?