Bedtime

Lawmakers: Daylight-Saving Time Saves Fuel

I'm all for the proposal to extend daylight savings from the end of March to the end of November, but I think some lawmakers are confused about what it does:

"The more daylight we have, the less electricity we use," said Markey, who cited Transportation Department estimates that showed the two-month extension would save the equivalent of 10,000 barrels of oil a day.

DST doesn't create more daylight--it shifts the clock so the "times" the sun is up better correspond to when people are up and about. You could save just as much--more, in fact--energy if everyone got up with the sun, regardless of the time on the clock, and went to bed when it went down or soon thereafter. It's our insistence on sleeping through morning daylight and staying up late at night--which I'm part of, just like everyone else--that costs us all this extra energy. DST is just a scheme to move the daylight back in the day so we can use it after we're done working each day.

If they're serious about saving energy, lawmakers should institute a national lights-out at 10 PM. Local news and late-night TV aren't all that great anyhow, and if you just can't fall asleep at 10, there are plenty of things you can do in the dark...