Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Saving Daylight

Does changing the clocks really make anything work better? Or is it busywork for society, pretending that we're doing something to improve efficiency (saving energy would fall under that heading), make daily life more user-friendly (arranging things so the farmers can work or so the kids can go to school with the benefit of daylight would fall under that one), and so on. But in a 24-hour world... in a world with electricity for that matter... is it just spinning our wheels?

Most of us are not dependent on natural light. Farmers get up in the dark, regardless of what the clock says (and livestock do not respect government edicts to 'change time'). The kids might have another week of going to school in the light (after a week of going to school in the dark because we changed the clocks to Daylight Savings Time last spring), but now they come home in the dark. Meanwhile we have sleep disturbed, appointments missed, traffic accidents.

So, for all the disruption, what is really gained?