This is going to be my most controversial take of many months, but it’s urgent now, because there is a bipartisan group of senators with the backing of President Trump who want to end daylight saving time.
I don’t like this. I am a big supporter of daylight saving time and I’m not just saying that to be contrarian. I really like daylight saving time, and I think it is a mistake to end it.
When all the senators get together across both parties and they all agree on something, you know that thing is going to be terrible. In this case, what they want to do is lock the clock. Why? Because every person who’s never given a second thought to daylight saving time and has just scrolled through Twitter will say, “Actually, daylight saving time is really bad, because people die every year. Did you know that it actually increases deaths every year?”
To that I say, “Oh, really? How’s that?”
“Because I saw a tweet about it one time. It increases deaths because people have to wake up a little earlier. Plus, they have heart attacks,” they will say.
Well, there is a negligible uptick in deaths but that is a statistically dubious observation. What that argument ignores, however, are all of the benefits we get from daylight saving time. I guess the question you have to ask yourself, which really gets down to a difference between the Left and the Right, is “Why do we have daylight saving time in the first place?” Before we go and tear down Chesterton’s Fence, how about we ask, ”Why is that fence up in the first place?”
Most people will say, “Well, because of farming. It used to be when a lot of people were farmers, having that extra daylight was really helpful. But, you know, now most people don’t really farm, so it’s not a big deal.”
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Okay then, what are the other benefits of daylight saving time? Daylight saving time extends daylight in the warmer months when you want to be outside playing around. You don’t need that extra daylight in the winter months when you really don’t want to be outside much anyway.
According to the Department of Energy, daylight saving time reduces energy usage and energy costs, not by a ton, but by 0.5%. That’s pretty good when you consider all the energy of the United States. There is also evidence that daylight saving time actually reduces deaths, because it reduces car crashes. That’s from a study back in 1995. It also saves property and might save people’s lives because daylight saving time reduces street crime, pretty significantly. Robberies, for instance, dropped 27% during the sunset hours during daylight saving time. That’s according to a more recent study from 2015.
Daylight saving time increases economic activity because you can go out, and you’re more inclined to go shopping. You’re more inclined to work a little bit. It increases economic activity both domestically and internationally, because other countries use daylight saving time too.
But here’s my most basic argument for daylight saving time: it’s a tradition. It’s a kind of fun tradition. It’s a tradition that recognizes, in a particularly pronounced way, the changing of the seasons, the movement of time, the variety of life. It’s kind of fun, and kooky. People will say, “Well, we shouldn’t have to change our clocks twice a year, what a hassle. It’s not efficient.” Life is about more than efficiency, my friends. Our modern, clinical, robotic culture just wants to maximize efficiency in everything.
I am a conservative. I don’t want to maximize efficiency in everything. I like to enjoy fun, quirky little things. I enjoy our culture, and that’s a fun little cultural habit. It actually does produce economic and health benefits as well, and it kind of makes sense. And we’ve forgotten why we had daylight saving time in the first place. And like so many levelers and radicals, when we forget why a tradition exists, we just want to get rid of it. We don’t ask ourselves, “Why did that tradition arise in the first place? Why, if we maintain that tradition, have we ever tried to get rid of the tradition? How has it worked out?”
It seems like there’s a mass psychosis that’s going on that convinces everyone that we’ve been wrong for so many decades now.
I’m pro daylight saving time and you should be too. Call your congressman.
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