Congress has the solution to our energy crisis (assuming we even have a crisis) — screw up the clocks even more:
If Congress passes an energy bill, Americans may see more daylight-saving time.
Lawmakers crafting energy legislation approved an amendment Wednesday to extend daylight-saving time by two months, having it start on the last Sunday in March and end on the last Sunday in November.
…
“The more daylight we have, the less electricity we use,” said [Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass.], who cited Transportation Department estimates that showed the two-month extension would save the equivalent of 10,000 barrels of oil a day.
The country uses about 20 million barrels of oil a day.
Do the math: that’s 1/20 of one percent of our oil usage per day. But the extension is only for two months, so on an annual basis that’s 1/6 of 1/20 of 1%, or 1/120 of 1% of our annual oil consumption.
And of course, not all our energy comes from oil, so why should we think that all the “daylights savings savings” should also come from oil?
And of course “savings” estimates from government proposals are always exaggerated.
So Congress wants to screw up the entire country’s clocks for the smallest of potential savings?
But that’s the Politics of the Warm Fuzzy Feeling: the politicians “did something,” which — no matter how stupid, pointless or counterproductive — is all that matters nowadays.
For Discussion: We all know the obvious cost of Daylight Savings Time: the physical exertion of having to change all our clocks twice a year. What are some of the other costs of the program or, more importantly, of changing it? I can think of one: computer operating systems such as Microsoft Windows will have to be updated to change the scheduling of DST. Who can think of others? Might they add up to the equivalent value of 1/120 of 1% of our annual oil consumption? See also this Commons Blog post.
2 responses so far ↓
Link dave // Apr 8, 2005 at 3:33 pm
a book by michael downing on the history of daylight savings (and the insidious politics behind it) was reviewed in the wall st. journal recently. haven't read it, and probably won't (i don't really care enough!), but it sounds pretty fascinating.
the review is worth a read. let me know if you can't read the review (you have to be a wsj.com subscriber)
dave
Link M1A1 // Apr 8, 2005 at 6:25 pm
As we all know, time = money.
Therefore, we may assume that borrowed time is repaid with interest just as borrowed money may be. We see this in practice.
The government borrows one hour from us when we set our clocks forward in the spring. It is repaid in the fall, seven months later when we "fall back". The interest on this is paid every four years in the form of a leap day. (What the government uses that extra hour for in the meantime is highly classified and the subject of whispered speculation among physics grad students.)
Of course there are those filthy communist freeloaders in Hawaii, Indiana and Arizona who do not observe DST, but nevertheless take advantage of free leap days.
As you can calculate, that is a tremendous rate of return. One hour borrowed over a total period of about 28 months yields an impressive 2400% overall return.
I believe this is a nefarious government scheme to reduce the cost of time borrowing. They plan on taking our precious hours for longer, but do not plan to extend the leap day.
***shakes fist***