Does Daylight Savings Time Help?

Not according to a study conducted at the University of California-Santa Barbara and reported recently in the Wall Street Journal. The prevailing wisdom of Daylight Savings Time is that having more time in the afternoon with sun means we’ll leave the lights off longer. That might be true, but it also happens to mean we turn the AC on longer, run our computers longer, and watch TV longer. None of these concerns really weighed heavily on Ben Franklin’s head when he invented the concept. Researchers at USC Santa Barbara have concluded that moving to daylight savings time has cost at leas their study area millions of additional dollars in energy expense. So think of that this weekend when you “spring forward” and loose a hour of precious sleep!


One Reply to “Does Daylight Savings Time Help?”

  1. Sherrill Callender

    I am so pleased to read something scientifically negative about the energy that DST is supposed to save. I have long thought (common sense) that it was counter-productive. And, my body tells me every year during DST that it is very unhappy as my bio-rhythms are out of sync and I feel sleep deprived most of the time. It well KNOWS that at 5 or 6:00am it is really only 4 or 5:00am (doesn’t want to get up) and that at 10 or 11:00pm it is only 9 or 10pm (isn’t ready to sleep)…and this NOW for 8 months of the year?! It truly must take a toll on most humans as I feel that it is very unhealthy for our bodies to be constantly waging a “light war” within and also for all animals that are kept on this human time schedule. Are there any studies past, present or future about this? Can a lobby against DST be effectively started?

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