Kimberly Emerson

Good morning, America.  This is your government speaking.  This morning, for your convenience, we’ve decided to mess with your life. 

This is how I hear the phrase “Daylight Savings Time.”  I am told that this is for the good of us all, and that smarter, more informed people than I have made the decision to continue this quaint tradition for another year.  I am robbed of yet another hour of sleep, because someone in Washington decided that this would save our country energy. 

The custom started back in the early part of the 20th century, ostensibly to cut back on the amount of energy we spend as a country trying to light our homes.  In the summertime, most of us stay asleep past the time when the sun comes up.  We are “wasting” that daylight, according to Ben Franklin’s original essay on the subject.  I think time spent sleeping is good and productive, myself, but then who am I to argue with the guy who discovered electricity?  (Or, one could say, the guy who didn’t have the good sense not to fly kites with metal things attached to them during a thunderstorm.)  Never mind that he wrote the essay in the late 1700s and we didn’t adopt the policy until 1918.  The idea was that we move the clock an hour forward, so that it will be dark when I am still sleeping and light in the evening when I’m awake and doing things.  According to a study done in the 1970s, this little inconvenience to me saves our country 1% on its national energy expenditure.

Okay, so if it makes sense to have the time be later, why the switching?  If daylight savings time is all that great, why don’t we just stay there?

Well, that could be a problem in places like Indiana, where the sun doesn’t come up until 8:00am in the winter.  Maybe it’s just me here in sunny Southern California that can’t appreciate this lovely piece of timekeeping wizardry. 

But wait – wasn’t there just a study about this…in Indiana?  Yes, as a matter of fact, there was, and it found that while DST did indeed save light, it did not save energy.  They used Indiana as an example because at the time, some counties in Indiana observed DST while others did not, so they could get a true side-by-side comparison of energy bills.  The analysis showed that people in the areas that made the time change spent, on average, $3.19 per household more in utilities than those who stuck with the one time and stayed there.  Not a huge amount, no.  Most of us probably have that much floating around in a dish of spare change somewhere.  But me personally, I’d rather spend it on a latte than on my energy bill.  Besides, wasn’t the whole point of this to save energy?   When added up, the counties of Indiana that acted in compliance with this particular tradition spent a total of $8.6 million annually more than their renegade brethren. 

So what went wrong?  Did the good people of Indiana insist on sleeping later to make up the difference?  No.  They did, however, insist on it being a comfortable temperature, however light or dark it was outside, and the costs of the air conditioning and heating that was used added up to a lot more than the light that was saved.  An apologist for DST that I recently read said that of course this was the fault of Indiana, and in places like California where more air conditioning is used, more money would be saved by DST. 

Are they on drugs?  Nothing is ever cheaper in California.  I happen to think California is an amazing place to live, and that the cost is worth it, but there is no escaping that there is a cost for living here.  Energy is more expensive in California than just about anywhere else in the country (according to one study I read, it’s nearly twice the national average).  Given the difference, I’d guess that the average Northern California city easily outspends its Indianian counterpart on heating bills.  Southern California may have lower heating costs, because it rarely gets below 40, but it has air conditioning bills the likes of which would probably blow the mind of anyone in Indianapolis.  In places like Fontana, where my parents and grandparents used to live, it is not at all unusual during the summer for people to leave their AC on 24 hours a day, thus rendering DST completely irrelevant.  For those like my parents who diligently turned off the AC whenever possible, it would actually make more sense for them to sleep through as much daylight as they could stand, since they didn’t turn on the air until they woke up.

Last year, the Bush administration made the decision to extend Daylight Savings Time, starting it three weeks early and pushing the end out another week.  While it is still beat out by two wars, a flooded New Orleans and Guantanamo Bay as my least favorite Bush decision ever, I have to say the choice to extend DST is close.  Especially in the spring, I and most of my fellow citizens get up in the dark, turning on every light possible to force ourselves into consciousness.   My support of Obama has cooled since I heard he had let this schedule stand.

You know, this is probably part of a centuries-old Franklinian plot.  Ben Franklin also advocated that people get up with the sun.  I used to think that was barbaric.  Now, thanks to DST, it means I’d get to sleep in.