I Still Love DST
This weekend is the start of Daylight Saving Time across most of America. Historically, modern Daylight Saving Time (DST) was introduced to allow for more leisure time during the summer months (as introduced by William Willet).
In the last 30-40 years, DST has been trumpeted as reducing energy costs by cutting the amount of electricity use in the afternoon hours. So prevalent was this opinion that the length of DST was increased by one month starting in 2007 by the Energy Policy Act of 2005.
A recent study purports that DST doesn’t actually reduce energy costs, but it actually does the opposite; it increases energy costs by as much as 4%. Any electricity costs that are recouped by less incandescent lighting are spent (and then some) by air conditioning cooling costs.
The news isn’t all bad for DST as it also concludes that advancing the clocks an hour increase leisure activities, reduces traffic collisions, reduces crime and helps with SAD.
Regardless of statistics, polls, and studies I know that I love DST and I’m overjoyed that it’s starting earlier (and ending later). I can remember, not too long ago, leaving work in the dead of night (5 PM) and being completely demoralized for the rest of the day. Traffic was horrible and forget about being active for the rest of the day. Of course, I’m a sun follower and always will be so I’m a little predisposed to DST.
With all of that in mind, I wanted to link to two comics (from We the Robots) by the brilliant Chris Harding (his About section is pure comedic genius especially the Biology portion) that recently made me bust up laughing. I promise, this has something to do with DST (or at least SAD).
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