In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Legislating Time

Lauren

Apparently the government controls time as well as reality, so goes the bipartisan bill that passed in Congress to extend Daylight Saving Time by two months. March through November, they say, to “save energy.”

“The more daylight we have, the less electricity we use,” said U.S. Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who co-sponsored the measure with U.S. Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.)…

The pair cited a government study that estimated the additional energy savings at the equivalent of 100,000 barrels of oil a day, or about half of 1 percent of the nation’s daily oil consumption. Most of the energy saved would be in the form of electricity because lights would be used less in the early evenings, the study projected.

Gee, I can think of a few great ways to save energy other than screwing with our sense of time, namely generating our own energy, updating our home insulation, turning the degrees on the AC up and the heat down, turning them off altogether, planting trees near our homes, driving and manufacturing more efficient cars, programmable thermostats, buying and shopping green, walking, public transit, recycling, and gardening.

Damn. All that is possible to “save energy” but apparently “saving energy” is completely insistent on what time the goddamn sun rises and sets. It may just be me, but I can’t think of anything more absurd than trying to control time.

Indiana, my home state, has been exempt from DST while the rest of the country reset and reset their clocks every year. It was perhaps the only thing we had to brag about other than our great masses of corn and soybeans. Then Mitch Daniels, a Bush cronie, came in as governor and the first thing he pledged to do was get us in on DST like the rest of the country, citing that our state’s lack of outside commerce was contingent on our refusal to participate in DST. We are a time zone border state and because many of our cities lie close to big cities in bordering states, certain counties went with their bordering big cities’ time zones. Daniels’ goal was to have us all on one page.

Imagine my surprise when it was recently announced that counties now get to pick which time zone they’re in. You know, that really clears up the time zone issue and I’m totally sure it will boost the state economy. Thanks, Mitch Daniels.

15 thoughts on Legislating Time

  1. You’d think they’d have better, more important things to concern themselves with. You know, like flag burning and the PATRIOT ACT. I don’t even understand how daylight savings actually saves anything so it doesn’t make much sense to me.

  2. Aside from the fact this would put us on a different schedule from the rest of the world, it will actually end up sending elementary school children out to catch the bus/walk to school before sunrise. Maybe that’s why the wany us to have more kids, to make up for the increase in the ones we have getting kidnapped/murdered/hit by cars

  3. Being a time zone border state, we’re either on the butt-end of one time zone or heading another. Neither is really all that great.

    Honestly, leaving DST out of the picture altogether has been a blessing. When I first heard about DST — and it was later than you might think — I thought it was a joke.

  4. You know, what is really, truly stupid about this is that it is likely to do just the opposite of what they propose. Starting Daylight Savings Time a month earlier isn’t going to get us any more daylight. It just means we’ll getting up earlier in March when it’s still dark outside, so we’ll be using more electricity instead of less.

    I wonder if those buffoons in Congress actually believe they have the power to legislate the solar system, so that if they just pass a law they can impact how much sunlight we get? Oy.

  7. “It just means we’ll getting up earlier in March when it’s still dark outside, so we’ll be using more electricity instead of less.”

    Only if you live in the unwholesome northern tier of the US. The God-fearing residents of the sunbelt live closer to the Equator, so they have daylight to spare in winter.

  8. Arizona kicks ass because we still haven’t given in to Daylight Savings Time. That is definitely the only reason Arizona kicks ass.

  9. I hate the idea of DST in Indiana… we are just in the middle of Eastern and Central. If we have to choose, I would rather be Central. The idea of school kids standing at the bus stop in the dark for months is just not right, and then during the summer having sun till 10 at night? Really WTF? Now you have counties deciding based on where they are close to… i forsee this line down the middle of Indiana, now that won’t confuse anyone.

  10. There is a website for Central Time Zone, http://www.hoosiersforcentraltime.com... but in the name of total disclosure it was started by the president of a drive-in movie theatre. Now if we go Eastern, it will hurt the drive-ins financially so he has a motive for central time, but it is hard to argue with the facts he has on the site. Just in case anyone else wants central time.

  13. Hmm. You know, this is actually one legislative proposal that I think makes a lot of sense. (*cringe*) Wait! Wait! I do have reasons somewhere…

    This makes me now want to go dig up the article I read a couple of months ago about this. There’s definitely research that has been done about the relative safety of kids waiting for the bus in the morning in the dark, versus potentially walking home from the bus at dusk. In the morning, drivers tend to be much more alert, where as in the evening, the same level of darkness is meeting with a much more tired driver. Hence, a higher likelihood of hitting and killing a kid. (And yes, I do remember walking home from the bus at dusk–round 4:30, maybe?–when I was a kid in the winter.)

    In the seventies they switched to daylight savings time year-round for a year or two, and it saved a lot of energy, as I recall.

    Okay, I’m gonna stop spouting this stuff off from my memory and go try to find a link to that article to post…

  14. Okay! The Wikipedia article on DST has the study that I’m thinking of. You can find that here. (uhh, don’t know if that linked right… sorry!)

    The relevant part is–
    “When the U.S. went on extended DST in 1974 and 1975 in response to the 1973 energy crisis, Department of Transportation studies found that observing DST in March and April saved 10,000 barrels of oil a day, and prevented about 2,000 traffic injuries and 50 fatalities saving about U.S. $28 million in traffic costs.”

    Ehh, I’m just never opposed to something that slows down our ridiculous consumption of oil and natural resources. Hell, I’d be in favor of switching to DST year-round. Just move every time zone over by one.

  15. All in the name of business, you know. Once Indiana goes on DST with the rest of the country, all those factories and business owners will JUST HAVE TO come to the Hoosier state and set up shop. NOT!

    Ole Mitch promised Hoosiers it will help business. Yeah, right!

    Detroit recalls their cars…can’t we do the same with our politicians (and no I didn’t vote for him!).

Comments are currently closed.