This week marks the end of Daylight Saving Time. For most college students, that meant sleeping in an extra hour last Sunday morning. This year, however, you might have realized that DST came one week later than usual.
Don't worry: It's not a sinister warp in the time-space continuum. It's only a botched attempt to legislate time.
Back in August 2005, Congress ratified the Energy Act, including a provision to extend Daylight Saving Time by four weeks, ostensibly to save energy.
Rep. Edward Markey of Massachusetts has touted the measure as a panacea for everything from the energy crisis to traffic fatalities to sluggish economic growth. More light in the evenings means fewer lights on in houses, fewer traffic accidents and more excuses to head outside and spend.
Yet DST isn't the silver bullet some politicians make it out to be.
In fact, the new changes have no proven energy-saving benefit. Not anymore at least.
As a delegate to Paris in 1784, Ben Franklin proposed the idea of Daylight Saving. Waking up in broad daylight, he was astonished to see the shutters of the houses closed as Parisian occupants dozed merrily in their beds. In jest, Franklin suggested setting clocks back one hour to seize the daylight and save candles.
According to scholar Michael Downing, the push for DST now comes strictly from the retail sector. More light in the evening compels people to go out and shop after work. But this means Americans are burning more gas behind the wheel - even to the point of canceling out the energy-saving benefits.
Energy conservation, in fact, is just a fig leaf to cover the naked greed of retail interests. One of the biggest proponents of the DST change, in fact, has been the candy sector, which was delighted to have one more hour of daylight on Halloween.
And it's not just candy sellers that benefit. Back in 1986, the golf industry estimated that the change would increase profits by $400 million per year. 7-Eleven's around the nation also anticipated millions in surplus revenue.
With these gainers come even bigger losers. According to the Air Transport Association, the change will tack on an additional $150 million in costs to the air industry, due to delays and scheduling changes. Public companies making the software changes could spend around $350 million to adapt.
America will have even more difficulty synchronizing financial markets and flight schedules with Europe as well as Asia and Africa. Countries like Canada and Mexico have also been prompted to follow in America's footsteps, despite having drastically different needs.
Extended DST also impedes religious Jews from observing sunrise prayers in their houses and forces children to walk to bus stops in morning darkness. For students like us, we tend to become more tired as our biological rhythms try to adjust.
And as far as DST's supposed lowering of traffic fatalities, it's not so simple. Shifting an extra hour of sunlight to the evening, while good for children coming home, also means more traffic accidents from the dark, chilly morning commute.
Last week, some electrical devices erroneously observed the old DST rules, screwing up systems in a phenomenon the tech world has dubbed Y2K7. Here at Penn, administrators have been working to patch computers and software. While most systems were operating smoothly, a few glitches emerged. Hence the signs on the glass doors in Van Pelt last week signaling that all clocks were off by one hour.
In fact, Penn's DST energy savings can't amount to that much if lights in some buildings (notably Huntsman and Van Pelt) are on virtually 24 hours - even when they're not needed. According to Facilities spokesmen Tony Sorrentino, no conclusive reduction in energy use for public buildings on campus has yet been shown.
At the risk of inconvenience to many groups, the DST changes have resulted in saving little energy while pandering to a small segment of retail interests. To fix the energy crisis, we need to stop living on borrowed time and adopt more direct measures to conserve power. Sorry Ben, but let's stop fiddling with our clocks and start springing for concrete energy solutions.
Elizabeth Song is a College junior from Salem, N.C. Her e-mail address is song@dailypennsylvanian.com. Striking a Chord appears on alternating Wednesdays.
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