An Urban's Rural View

The first country to adopt it -- Germany, back in 1916 -- dubbed it Sommerzeit: Summer Time. To Americans in 2014, that sounds odd: This year we switch to it in early March, when much of the country is shivering, not sweating.

To be fair to the Germans, what we call it -- Daylight Saving Time -- is just as iffy, if not iffier. DST doesn't really save daylight; it just transfers it from morning to evening. By one account (http://tiny.cc/…), an early proponent of DST was a New Zealand entomologist who stood to benefit from additional evening daylight for collecting insects.

If DST saves anything, it's energy, though even that is disputed. The Germans adopted it during World War I in hopes of saving coal. The U.S. Department of Energy told Congress in 2008 that adding a month to DST, as Congress did in 2005, saved the country 1.3 terawatt hours of electricity annually, or about 0.03% (http://tiny.cc/…).

But in a debate on the New York Times website (http://tiny.cc/…), a Yale University economist says recent research indicates the opposite: DST increases energy usage. A study he did in Indiana, which embraced DST statewide in 2006, showed a 1% increase in residential energy consumption. That's because, he said, "daylight saving time reduces demand for residential lighting, yet increases demand for heating and especially cooling."

Uncle Sam doesn't require states to change the clocks and some (Arizona and Hawaii, for example) don't. Debates rage in state legislatures over going to permanent daylight time or permanent standard time. Theoretically, states on opposite sides of the dividing line between time zones could go different ways on that issue, leaving people who live only a few miles apart with a two-hour time difference.

For many, it's the twice-a-year change that's the problem. Springing forward and falling back isn't just a hassle, though it's certainly that. Critics say it affects sleep, hurts the economy and even causes accidents. Better, they say, to be on one kind of time or the other year round.

Which would farmers prefer -- permanent daylight or permanent standard? Though there's an urban myth that DST was championed to help farmers, historically many farmers have opposed it. According to History.com (http://tiny.cc/…), agrarian interests led a successful fight to repeal it after World War I. (It was reintroduced in World War II and reintroduced again during the energy crisis of the 1970s.)

They objected to it, the website says, because they "had to wait an extra hour for dew to evaporate to harvest hay, hired hands worked less since they still left at the same time for dinner and cows weren't ready to be milked an hour earlier to meet shipping schedules."

Would farmers voice the same objections today? I suspect it would depend on where they farm and which crops they grow. I also suspect it would depend on personal preference. Morning people might prefer permanent standard time, night owls permanent daylight time. (If I'm wrong, I'm sure I'll get comments saying so.)

The one thing that's clear about Daylight Saving Time is that it's a source of controversy. Everything about it seems to provoke quarrels, even the name. It used to be Daylight Savings Time, with the second word plural, but the official name now renders the saving singular. That's fine as far as I'm concerned, but the copy editor in me is desperate to hyphenate it to Daylight-Saving Time.

Then again, maybe it would be easier just to call it Sommerzeit.

Urban Lehner

urbanity@hotmail.com

(ES)

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