Our state Legislature has accomplished all their goals. They have outlawed eyeball tattoos, enacted the biggest budget increase in history, raised the price of gasoline, and enabled the worst school funding debacle since statehood.
Having done all this with time to spare, they recently voted to change the amount of available daylight.
As I understand the logic, too many people get confused during the change from daylight savings to standard time, so we should quit changing.
Making daylight savings time permanent would give us all the benefits of daylight savings without having to change our clocks. Throughout human history, mid-day has been when the sun was highest in the sky, but with the stroke of a pen, our legislature proposes to delay the sun’s zenith until one o’clock in the afternoon. That’s amazing!
The bill’s sponsors refuse to put the change to a vote of the people claiming that the people are overwhelmingly in favor. I think they asked the wrong question. People are tired of changing their clocks twice a year, but that doesn’t mean they prefer daylight savings.
Daylight savings time has just passed its 100th anniversary in Washington. During World War I, there was a popular movement for factory workers to begin their work day earlier, so as to have more time to plant gardens. Some factories voluntarily changed their work schedules to accommodate this daylight savings concept while others did not.
Although there was no evidence of any benefit, lawmakers became convinced that time could be controlled by setting our clocks back or forward, thus on March 21, 1919 daylight savings time became the law of the land. After the war, the concept was pretty much abandoned across the country until the energy crises of the 1970s. Some genius with several degrees behind his name, but no common sense, convinced Congress that we could reduce the hours of darkness by changing our clocks.
We don’t need electric lights in the daytime so changing our clocks was supposed to save energy. Thus, daylight savings time became fairly universal across the country.
Several energy consumption studies were commissioned to document the amount of energy savings. None found any actual savings, but springing forward and falling back have become routine.
Not all states buy into the energy/light saving time change. Arizona and Hawaii stay on standard time all year. In Canada, Saskatchewan stays on central standard time even though they are actually in the mountain time zone. I’m not sure why, but Alaska and much of the Canadian Yukon switches to daylight savings. I am still trying to determine what daylight they save.
I lived in Alaska for three years and can testify there is 24 hours of daylight in June. I could understand trying to save a few, sunny days and moving them into December when we had little if any sunlight, but I didn’t notice that happening.
Those of us raised in the country are accustomed to planning our day around the rise and fall of the sun, moon, and stars. I sympathize with those who live where cloudy and wet are normal. On most days they aren’t sure if the sun is up there or not.
I can understand they don’t care about the time zone and would just like to have their clocks set and left alone. Permanent daylight savings time will not make it seem like summer in December. It will, however, make our kids walk to school in the dark much of the winter. It is a bad idea.
Let’s set our clocks and phones to standard time and leave them there.
Frank Watson is a retired Air Force Colonel and long-time resident of Eastern Washington. He has been a free-lance columnist for over 19 years.
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