WSJ: Is Daylight Savings Time Worth It? Not Really

Daylight savings time began at 2:00am Sunday morning. Growing up before the age when smartphones automatically reset their clock, it was always a joke on Sunday morning to see who arrived at church an hour late. Invariably, a few people did, sheepishly. Setting your clocks back one hour (or forward one hour) twice a year is inconvenient and disruptive to sleep. It is even worse if you live near a time zone that does not change as is the case in Arizona. It could be worse, however. Consider if you were in Ireland around the end of the 19th Century. Dublin, Ireland was in a different time zone than Belfast, but the time difference was not an hour, it was closer to half an hour. 

Even more surprisingly, from 1880 to 1916 someone travelling on the Holyhead to Dublin ferry would have to move their watch back by 25 minutes when they arrived in Ireland.

The reason? Ireland had its own time zone – known as Dublin Mean Time – which was 25 minutes and 21 seconds behind Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), the local time in the rest of the United Kingdom.

The original purpose of daylight savings time was to reduce energy consumption by preserving daylight. That is, the sun would set an hour later in the day. What theoretically may have saved energy one hundred or more years ago may not make much difference today. 

Preliminary findings from Yale economist Matthew Kotchen, with Arianna Salazar-Miranda, Erin Mansur and Steve Cicala, suggest that in some places daylight-saving time saves electricity, while in others it uses more, with the overall effect across the U.S. basically a wash. The upshot is that electricity saved by behavior such as leaving lights off until later in the evenings is spent in the darker mornings by doing things like turning on the lights to make sure our socks match.

Also, daylight savings time causes people to drive more. 

The switch from standard time to daylight savings time has significant negative health effects. While you hear fewer complaints about when standard time begins, and everyone gets an extra hour of sleep, the same cannot be said for then daylight savings time begins, and we lose an hour of sleep. Politicians all agree that the twice-yearly time change needs to stop. In 2022 then Senator Marco Rubio sponsored the Sunshine Protection Act, which passed unanimously. It never became the law, however. Unbelievably, the sticking point is whether to revert to standard time year-round or stick with daylight savings time year-round.

Many businesses favor daylight time over the alternative, known as standard time. An outdoor cafe might attract customers later in the evening, while a golf course could fit another foursome in before nightfall. In the 2007 extension, the end of daylight-saving time moved from the last Sunday in October to the first Sunday in November, adding an extra hour of light to Halloween evenings. It was a provision that excited candy makers, on the expectation of better Halloween sales.

The Wall Street Journal claims sleep scientists want to make standard time permanent. Supposedly, standard time would be better, for health reasons. The debate between standard time and daylight savings time all boils down to extra daylight in the mornings or evenings. Congress passed permanent daylight savings time in the 1940s and again in the 1970s, before repealing the law. The chief complaint was that school kids had to walk to school in the dark when drivers were less likely to see them. If you have driven by a school during drop-off or pickup recently the line of cars literally stretches for blocks. Few grade school kids walk to school anymore, at least in my neighborhood. I vote for year-round daylight savings time. Winter is the time of year with the least daylight after work and standard times cuts it back by an additional hour.

Read More at WSJ: Is Daylight-Saving Time Worth It? Experts Still Debating the Pros and Cons of ‘Spring Forward’