Has the clock run out on permanent daylight saving time?
Congressional correspondent Chad Pergram breaks down the complexities of time from the U.S. Naval Observatory on 'America Reports.'
Here comes the end of Daylight Saving for 2022, a Sunday morning most of us enjoy because we get an extra hour to sleep in.
Catching up on sleep each November, however, is the only good thing that comes with Daylight Saving or DST (it’s singular, not plural, by the way).
Springing forward and falling back creates havoc with airline and train schedules, confusing people, costing money, and causing accidents and delays.
PERMANENT DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME MAY BE HARMFUL TO OUR HEALTH, EXPERTS SAY
More traffic fatalities occur every time we switch the clock, because motorists are too sleep deprived to drive safely.
Parents despise Daylight Saving because it means that their children walk or bike to and from school in darkness.
Farmers hate DST, because cows have to be convinced to be milked one hour earlier or later.
Ever have that kind of a discussion with a cow?
Forget cows. Your body hates to shift an hour either forward or back. It’s like getting jet lag even though you didn’t even get to travel anywhere. Many people need a full week before their internal time clocks -- their circadian rhythms -- are reset.
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Ben Franklin gets the credit for the inventing Daylight Saving, but the concept was actually adopted first by Germany during World War I to help conquer Europe.
And we all know how that worked out.
Why keep DST? Some studies indicate that it saves a small amount of energy, because we do more stuff on summer evenings than summer mornings. Of course, now you need more energy in winter mornings, when it’s darker longer, so there goes that argument.
Some say that fewer pedestrians are killed because the days are longer. In fact, more pedestrians and bicyclists are hit by cars because of DST, simply because more of them are outside when the evenings are longer.
So, the time has come to eliminate Daylight Saving, once and for all.
Election day is Tuesday, and new Congress will be sworn in come January. Here’s a bit of bipartisanship that can get the new session off on the right foot: eliminate DST now and forever.
This will be the first piece of legislation upon which practically all voters can agree.
Passing the bill might even improve Congress’ dismal reputation in the eyes of the electorate.
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That’s what I call… government in the sunshine.
This Sunday, enjoy your extra hour of rest, and with any luck, next year, we will stand united instead of falling back.
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