Get ready to set your clocks forward this weekend! At 2AM on Sunday, March 10, daylight saving time begins.
For those who still are confused on how daylight saving (not “savings,” in case you’re really confused) works, here’s the quick rundown:
Every spring, most (but not all) states set their clocks forward one hour. Spring forward, fall back! In 2019, daylight saving time will end on November 3, so we still have eight months to go before you’ll have to worry again.
The reasoning behind this tradition is that by shifting our time forward an hour, we can maximize the amount of natural daylight available for use.
For example, let’s say you, a hardworking reader of the MoCo Student, go to bed at 9 o’clock every night. The sun sets around 6PM nowadays, but if you change your clock so the sun sets at 7PM instead, you will have gained an hour of light to study next to the window.
So is daylight saving time worth it?
I’ve noticed that it’s awfully bright when I drive to school around 7 in the morning. And these days, I have to start turning on my headlights before I even eat dinner.
Daylight saving time solves these problems. With it in place, I’ll be able to sleep in and wake up to natural light on the weekend without having to realize that it’s only 6:30 in the morning. Daylight saving time allows us to follow our general conceptions of night and day. We’ve been doing it for decades. It just feels right.
Secondly, daylight saving time saves energy on lighting. That makes sense, since the reason it began during World War I was to conserve electricity and use natural light.
In addition, daylight saving time helps retailers. When there’s an hour more of light, there’s an hour more of time to do activities. People tend to spend more money, with the greatest consumption observed in the sports/outdoors industry and the gas industry.
Critics, however, observe many drawbacks to daylight saving time. For one, while it saves lighting energy, it also increases air conditioning energy. After all, an hour more of sun is an hour more of cooling needed. Plus, with technological improvements in lighting outpacing those in the heating and cooling industry, there is a disparity between energy saved and energy spent. Thus, experts continue to debate the environmental impact of daylight saving time.
Moreover, contrary to popular belief, daylight saving time negatively affects agriculture. Farmers were one of the main groups that lobbied against the Daylight Saving Time Energy Act when it was officially passed by Congress in 1974. For them, it was hard to get crops to the market in time without early light, and their livestock did not adjust well to the changed time. You can’t talk to cows!
And finally, daylight saving time is correlated with injury and illness. Perhaps due to the loss of one hour’s sleep, fatal traffic accidents increase about 5.6% in the six days following the spring transition. Hospitals also report a 24% increase in heart attacks on the Monday right after.
It makes sense that some states, like Arizona and Hawaii, don’t have daylight saving time. In Arizona, where it’s very hot, an early sunset actually gives residents a few hours of cooler temperatures before bed. In Hawaii, the true southernmost state, there isn’t much difference of light in summer and winter anyway.
Meanwhile, states like California and Florida are trying to keep daylight saving time all the time. As you may have read on the news back in November, California voted on Proposition 7, which would act like the Sunlight Protection Act of Florida (not passed yet).
But such a bill must pass through the slow legislative process and poses financial risk. Falling out of sync with the rest of America could mess up interstate business scheduling. Additionally, in 2005, when Congress extended daylight saving time by a month, the Air Transport Association warned that keeping U.S. flights lined up with international travel schedules would cost $147 million a year.
And unlike these sunny states, Maryland does not really have an excuse to permanently stay on or off daylight saving time. We experience the seasons with relative intensity.
The health effects of daylight saving time aren’t all harmful, too. Indeed, on the Monday in November after we fall back and snooze an hour longer, heart attacks actually drop by 21%.
It may be a hassle to change our clocks twice a year, but with increasingly “smart” technology that automatically adjusts the time, we have to think less and less about the switch. Changing the clocks is hardly a chore except for the genuinely lazy.
My conclusion: Although there are legitimate concerns to daylight saving time, there are benefits to balance them out. In Maryland, there is no real incentive to change the century-old custom, and doing so may prove more trouble than it’s worth.
Article by MoCo Student staff writer Charese Vo of Richard Montgomery High School