"Daylight Savings Time Is America's Greatest Shame" boldly declared a story on The Atlantic magazine's website this week. As if that wasn't over-the-top enough, the secondary headlinie called it "the greatest continuing fraud ever perpetuated on American people."
Holy smokes, folks - hyperbole much?
America's greatest shame is slavery, with the genocide of its aboriginal population in the decades after the Civil War a close second. To suggest something as ridiculous as the twice-yearly time change is the country's greatest shame trivializes those two atrocities.
As for the greatest fraud, that would be the myth of the American dream where anyone can become rich or be president, regardless of the socioeconomic status they are born into. The greatest actual financial fraud, if the definition needs a money component, is the one perpetuated on the world markets by Wall Street firms each day.
Yet once the reader gets past the indignation of writer Alexander Abad-Santos, he offers plenty of valid reasons why North America needs to get out of the time change cycle, the first being that most of the rest of the world doesn't bother.
His article blows apart the various myths around the validity of the biannual time change. The energy savings are barely worth mentioning, even after Canada and the U.S. extended Daylight Savings Time by a month back in 2007. Nor does it make people feel any better and it doesn't improve sleep. In fact, he presents evidence that the switch disrupts sleeping rhythms, causes car accidents and decreases workplace productivity.
He also dismisses the "it's good for farmers" myth, the story most Canadians cling to as a justification for the time change. Apparently American farmers fought bitterly against Daylight Savings Time, arguing it gave them less sunlight to tend and harvest their fields.
Abad-Santos ends his article with gentle wisdom that helps overshadow the nostril-flaring fury at the beginning. People hate change and there's no practical reason for Daylight Savings Time, so keep the time constant all year long.
In B.C., time is confusing. Our northern friends in the Peace not only follow Mountain Time instead of Pacific Time, they also refuse to use Daylight Savings Time, meaning that half of the year, Dawson Creek and Fort St. John is on time with the rest of us and half of the year, they're in sync with Grande Prairie, Edmonton and Calgary.
The East Kootenays are a little less confusing since it's Mountain Time there and they observe Daylight Savings, so it's always one hour ahead in Cranbrook, no matter what season it is.
Time zones following political boundaries or not is bad enough but adding the complexity of a biannual time change just makes it worse, particularly since different parts of the world pick different dates to fall back or spring ahead.
In Prince George, the benefits of an extra hour's sleep one Sunday morning in November is quickly overwhelmed by the burden of people driving home from work in the complete dark for nearly three months of the year. Springing ahead gives everyone an extra hour of evening sunshine during barbecue and patio season but it's tough to hit the hay at 10 p.m. on weeknights in June and July when the sun is still shining outside.
While we longer have the madness of VCRs always blinking 12:00 because of owners refusing to reset the time twice a year and after every power outage, thanks to TV boxes and PVRs that always know what time is, the change just isn't worth it.
It's time B.C. joined our friends in Saskatchewan and dump Daylight Savings Time.
