Where Left Is Right / The Old Site

I've held off writing about this for a number of reasons -- chiefly, I didn't want to get myself worked up about the sheer stupidity of the Daylight Saving Time (DST) extension.

Now, Mrs. FLJerseyBoy and I have different takes on DST, owing probably to the differing geography of our respective childhoods. A Florida native and long-time resident, she loves sunshine and can't get enough of it, even when she's spending the day indoors. On the other hand, I lived in New Jersey for all of my childhood and adolescence, and most of my adult life; sunshine's okay, in my view, but vastly overrated as a constant condition. Unlike my wife, I have no particularly nostalgic memories of days spent playing in sunlight -- I much prefer, in memory as well as in real life, scenes in which the sunlight is landing on the ground, on people, especially on me only when filtered through overhead branches and leaves. (And when DST "turns off" in the fall, the experience of driving home with the lights on is almost inextricably bound up, in my head, with the thrilling approach of Thanksgiving and Christmas.)

Nostalgia and aesthetic considerations aside, the whole idea of DST just strikes me as ridiculous. If you want to spend as much time as possible in daylight hours, well, then, just get up at sunrise. If you want your store or other retail establishment to be open during as many daylight hours as possible, well, then, just open the doors at sunrise.

Oh, I've heard the arguments allegedly in its support, such as:

• DST conserves energy.
• It makes it easier to plan outdoor activities.
• It reduces crime.
• It reduces traffic accidents.

And so on.

The point -- it seems bizarre to feel it necessary to say something so obvious -- is that DST does not actually govern the amount of daylight available. The number of hours available in a given 24-hour period is the number of hours available, period. If you shift the time so it coincides with the start of daylight, or with the end, you haven't changed anything. Suppose that in winter months at your latitude, the period of daylight is, say, 9 hours long, beginning at -- let's say -- 7:30am local time, and running to 4:30pm. If you suddenly decide, or hell even if your whole town, your whole country suddenly announces that henceforth the sun rises at 8:30 and sets at 5:30, what's different?

Well, actually you've changed quite a lot.

In the first place, you've screwed up the livelihood of anyone (like farmers) whose work life depends partially on the actual rising and setting of the sun, and partially on the work schedules of other people -- such as the buyers of your products, who are now sitting around twiddling their thumbs waiting for your chores to get done.

You've also screwed up traffic. While the evidence is not wholly on one side or the other, those who advocate DST for traffic safety's sake aren't telling you about the counter-arguments. For example, in the early 1990s, a study by Stanley Coren of the University of British Columbia found an alarming increase in traffic accidents on the Monday following the jump ahead to DST. If you're old enough, you may recall that DST was tried year-round in the 1970s; one reason the year-round schedule was scrapped was the jump in the number of school bus crashes in the early-morning hours of the "permanent" DST.

(By the way, the photo at the top of this post shows a street in Stockholm, Sweden, on "Dagen H" -- H Day -- in 1967. This was the day when the Swedish switch from driving-on-the-left to driving-on-the-right took effect. I couldn't help seeing in this picture an unpleasant foreshadowing of a switch to a mostly-DST calendar year.)

Ah but yes, you say, what about the energy savings?

Again, the picture is muddled. The formula most often cited by DST proponents is that 10,000 barrels of oil are saved for each day that DST is in effect. What this is based on is a 30+-year-old study by the Department of Energy, using of course contemporary consumption figures; since then, there has been no further research on the subject. (It's kinda like saying that thanks to a 1973 Department of Defense study, the gravest threat to world peace in 2005 is Ho Chi Minh.) The amount of air conditioning, lighting, and other electrical drains would also seem to be unaffected by arbitrary human declaration of the start and end of the day. If you add an hour at the "end of the day" during DST, you might say, "See? No lights necessary then!" -- except that you've added another hour of darkness at the beginning of the day. (Yes, I know; you're not literally adding hours of daylight and darkness -- you're adding hours of useful daylight. But it's a convenient shorthand for reality. Ask any DST fan; they do it all the time.)

And while this may not affect all of us, the extended DST will have a profound effect on Orthodox Jews -- whose Sabbath is tied not to an arbitrary clock setting, but to the actual setting and rising of the sun on one day of the week.

(At least one signatory of the Energy Act of 2005 even conjectured that extending DST by a month would help bring American families closer together. Jeebus. Do you just have to say the word "family" to get people to hop on board your cause du jour's bandwagon? And evidently he overlooked the Orthodox Jewish family because, well, maybe because he doesn't know any himself.)

But you know, the worst thing about this isn't the questionable benefits of nine months a year of supposedly non-standard time. The worst thing about it is that it's a characteristically symbolic but ultimately cynical standard for Congress -- and The Weasel -- to be waving.

Remember, this wasn't originally part of the Energy Act of 2005. It was an amendment. And what does the rest of the act do? Here's a sample:

• Created a tax credit of up to $3400 for owners of qualifying hybrid vehicles. (Of course, it remained silent on the existing $25,000 tax credit for owners of qualifying SUVs, such as Hummers.)
• Expands the principle of eminent domain specifically to allow the federal government to clear paths for power lines (long a goal of utility companies, who hate dealing with local yokels who actually prefer their landscapes uncluttered).
• As a Washington Post story on the act said:

  The bill exempts oil and gas industries from some clean-water laws, streamlines permits for oil wells and power lines on public lands, and helps the hydropower industry appeal environmental restrictions. One obscure provision would repeal a Depression-era law that has prevented consolidation of public utilities, potentially transforming the nation's electricity markets.

And -- once again -- so on.

Finally, the switch to the additional month of DST will, during that month, play havoc with any human activity which crosses a US border to other countries... none of which, to date, have declared any intention of following the US's "lead" on this. That's why if there's any group which hates this whole idea worse than farmers, it's the airlines.

In short, in extending by one month Daylight Saving Time, Congress and The Weasel did nothing substantive, on unchallenged grounds. It's just something everybody understands in their everyday life (all that stuff about subsidies, environmental loopholes, and such -- that's just so out there, but an extra hour of daylight -- that's real, man).

Update, 2005-09-23: I should have mentioned one critical fact about this extended-DST amendment: it was sponsored by two Democrats. Evidently (a) they felt left out of the work that went into the Republican- and energy-industry-sponsored Energy Act proper, and (b), since all the actual corporate lobbyists were (in this case) already taken, they tossed a bone to the highly influential moonbat lobby.