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Daylight Saving Time is actually a good thing

SUNDAY MORNING EDITORIAL — Yes, we know, it’s still Saturday and not quite time for the Sunday Morning Editorial. There’s a reason for being early, which will become evident Sunday morning.

Daylight Saving Time isn’t everybody’s favourite thing. Some think it’s a pointless inconvenience.

But it’s an inconvenience that is short-lived. Twice a year, we have to change our clocks. Fall behind, spring ahead.

It’s all about balancing out the day. Gives us more daylight in the summer evenings, especially.

Origins of Daylight Saving time are fuzzy. There are as many different stories about who actually thought it up as there are blades of grass on a fairway. Which is where one story says DST started — an avid golfer in Scotland supposedly advocating for it so he could have more daylight to go golfing at the end of the day.

Not all  jurisdictions uses Daylight Saving Time, and there’s been something of a movement in recent years to get rid of it or, at least get rid of the clock change. Some people want to abolish Daylight Saving time, some want to do away with standard time — they don’t care, as long as the clock doesn’t have to be changed.

Some of the reasons for Daylight Saving time have disappeared, such as the one about how milk cows had trouble changing their body clocks to deal with it, and about saving energy by not having to turn on the oil lamps so early in the day.

The most important benefit though, remains the one about shifting daylight hours to make them more agreeable to our work and recreation schedules.

It’s not such a terrible thing to make that slight adjustment. Remember to do it Sunday.

Mel Rothenburger's avatar
About Mel Rothenburger (11731 Articles)
ArmchairMayor.ca is a forum about Kamloops and the world. It has more than one million views. Mel Rothenburger is the former Editor of The Daily News in Kamloops, B.C. (retiring in 2012), and past mayor of Kamloops (1999-2005). At ArmchairMayor.ca he is the publisher, editor, news editor, city editor, reporter, webmaster, and just about anything else you can think of. He is grateful for the contributions of several local columnists. This blog doesn't require a subscription but gratefully accepts donations to help defray costs.

2 Comments on Daylight Saving Time is actually a good thing

  1. Unknown's avatar Matt Greenwood // April 4, 2015 at 9:50 PM // Reply

    Actually, DST *is* a bad thing, in a whole bunch of ways. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84aWtseb2-4 is an excellent 6 minute video that lays it all out a lot more efficiently than I could, but in short, the major benefit of DST in the past was to save energy on lighting by giving people more time to go outdoors in the sun. In more modern times we now have far more efficient lighting technology, which destroys most of the alleged energy-saving benefit right there, and a lot of people don’t want to go outside anyway which means they often need that much more air-conditioning to stay comfortable, destroying the rest.

    As for the costs, there is a measurable increase every year in both suicides and traffic fatalities in the week immediately after the spring-forward clock change, most likely due to sleep deprivation. Time-tracking studies also estimate a $480 million productivity-loss for knowledge-workers alone in the week following the time-change. Finally, the global patchwork of countries and states and counties and cities who do or don’t observe DST each on their own schedules adds a huge layer of logistical complications twice a year all over the world, for (as already mentioned) no real benefit.

    Get rid of DST and save lives, literally!

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    • While I agree with what you have said, you did forget one thing. There are only 24 hours in a day. The amount of light hours, and dark hours are finite. All DST does is move them around, and not really to our benefit. Pick a time, and stick with it.

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