Daylight Wasting Time

Guess what's coming?

Daylight Saving Time looms again! The annual lockstep ritual of moving the clocks ahead an hour occurs this year on March 9, marking the second year in which the United States is on the new, vastly expanded Daylight Wasting Time schedule. DST had already been expanded in 1987 following a corporate-backed effort. (One of the supporters was the maker of Kingsford charcoal.) The later law - this one supported by electric companies - extended DST again starting last year.

In 2006 Indiana observed DST statewide for the first time - a change backed by Big Business and put in place by right-wing Gov. Mitch Daniels, one of the worst governors in America.

That expanding DST is industry-backed is borne out by the fact the months in the dead of winter that need sunlight the most don't have DST.

Now a University of California-Santa Barbara study shows DST wastes energy in Indiana - a finding that should surprise nobody familiar with DST's support from energy companies. Maybe DST is of more use elsewhere. But not in the Hoosier State, and if you've studied maps a lot, you might see why. The same would be true of nearby areas in Kentucky and Ohio.

That's because Daylight Wasting Time puts these areas way off from natural time. In Cincinnati it's almost 2 hours off. In, say, Terre Haute, it's much worse. The human body can't keep up with a schedule so far off from the biological clock. Indiana farmers objected to DST because it forces them to work in darkness in the morning.

Indiana's switch to DST has cost households in that state a total of $8,600,000 more in electricity bills. A lot of that isn't from lights, but from heating and cooling.

Here's a realistic plan I have: Keep DST, but move the time zone boundary east into Ohio and eastern Kentucky. As recently as the '60s, Indiana and some Kentucky counties near Cincinnati were in the Central Time Zone. If we're going to have DST for 8 months a year, let's put Cincinnati and Indiana in the Central Time Zone, so they're not so far off from the natural daily cycle.

Simply put, we don't belong in the Eastern Time Zone as long as Daylight Saving Time is around.

(Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120406767043794825.html)