I'm a night hawk. I've always been a night hawk. Sunlight at 6am, or 7am, or even 8am is just wasted sunlight to me except for what my solar panels catch. Tonight is the blessed arrival of DST–a day I look forward to after the depressing four months and a week of "Standard time". I don't know what is so "standard" about it since it is in place for only a third of the year. Annually we get pronouncements from medical experts about how the change is bad for our health. The Merc has one such view here noting
an increase in car accidents, heart attacks, strokes and potential negative effects on blood pressure and, most obviously, sleep. Martin says these effects make mental health symptoms worse for those with depression and anxiety and make things harder even for those without a mood disorder.
It seems to me most of those effects are a result of the change itself, not the "spring forward". The "fall back" probably does the same. If we were on DST all year, a lot of that would disappear. As for the depression and mood disorders, the late afternoon and early evening light is not accounted for by the experts. Jon Mays at the Daily Journal has weighed in with a preference for standard time all the time, but mostly with a desire to have us just pick one
And it is now more than seven years since 60% of California voters approved a change to permanent daylight-saving time, used in the summer, versus standard time, used in the winter. Proposition 7 was passed by 60% of California voters in what I would call a solid victory. Around 7 million people voted for the change in November 2018.
Most people think we should stick with daylight saving time year-round, however, I think we should stick with standard time. It’s the actual time and the shift of sunset from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. in the summer is just being greedy. We already get naturally longer days in the summer so why do we need that extra hour? However, I’d be in favor of either as long I didn’t have to go through another time change.
Greedy? Guilty as charged. From longer Spring ski days without flat light on the slopes to the arrival of Music in Parks on weekday evenings to the start of Spring sports for kids, they all benefit from that greedy grab of an hour. Let's face it. A lot of people aren't commuting to an 8am start of the workday five days a week. And if the kids are a little groggy and it doesn't stabilize after permanent DST has been around a while, start the school day 30 or 60 minutes later. At least they will have more time for after school sports instead of playing videogames indoors.
Leave a Reply