If Barack Obama accomplishes nothing else in his presidency but this, he will be a hero for generations to come. 

President-elect Obama wants to get rid of daylight saving time in the United States to conserve energy.

Turns out, according to two academics on the NYT Op-Ed page, there is little scientific proof that this reduces energy consumption. It also turns out that this practice could be wasteful, a bit annoying, and a lot of people, including Obama, want to get rid of it.

A study in Indiana, a state that recently started DST, showed an overall increase of 1 percent in residential electricity use with occasional increases of 2 to 4 percent in late spring and early fall. So much for conserving energy.

I hate DST. It throws me and my kids out of whack for a couple of days. I hope Obama gets rid of it. too.

There's just one problem -- there's nothing I could find that indicates that Obama is actually considering or supporting abolishment of DST. The article linked to at the NYT only says (after noting the debunking of DST saving energy):

Eliminating daylight time would thus accord with President-elect Barack Obama’s stated goals of conserving resources, saving money, promoting energy security and reducing climate change. At the very least, we should abandon the notion that we are saving energy while enjoying the extra hour of sunlight on hot summer evenings.

Which is very nice, but really says nothing about Obama actually wanting to eliminate DST, just that it is in accord with his conservation efforts.

That said ... it's a change I could believe in.

Filed under :: Environment :: Politics & Law
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From my point of view, eliminating daylight savings time would be a major disaster! Winter is bad enough with sunset coming at 4:30pm, let's not saddle ourselves with that any more than we already do. I love the late sunsets in the summer, and it's always somewhat depressing when sunset starts coming early enough that I have to cut my evening rides short in order to get home before dark. When sunset comes early, I more often end up riding my bike during rush hour, which I prefer not to do. If sunset is later, I can time my rides in such a way that I avoid the worst of rush hour. I think anyone who wants to get outdoors after work is in favor of daylight savings time whether it saves energy or not.

I agree that it's a pain when all of a sudden there's no "outside" time after work.

So, fine. Let's shift to DST permanently. Or go to Standard Time constantly, and just set standard work ours as 7-4. My concern is less as to which is the best situation as to the confusion and expense and annoyance of having to change twice a year. We live with axial tilt -- let's get over it.

Permanent DST would be fine with me, and I agree that it's bothersome to change the clocks twice a year. It would be nice if the standard didn't keep changing, then clock manufacturers could program the changes into the clocks and we wouldn't have to mess with them. But human nature being what it is, I suspect that there are plenty of people who love standard time as much as I hate it, and I'm sure that there's no way to prevent those in power from mucking with the system, thus making it impossible to create clocks that will always make the change automatically without human intervention.