Extending Daylight Saving Time.–

Late this morning I turned on my local FOX TV station and tried to figure out why it was showing a Televangelist rather than the NFL pregame show. It took awhile for me to realize that it must be the end of Daylight Saving Time. I had incorrectly thought that the new Daylight Savings law took effect this year, but it takes effect in 2007:

U.S. Daylight Saving Time Schedule

2005: April 3 – October 30

2006: April 2 – October 29

New Federal Law In Effect

2007: March 11 – Nov. 4

2008: March 9 – Nov. 2

Extending Daylight Saving time through Halloween only makes sense, thus reducing childhood accidents. But we should consider an extension more radical than just adding a month to DST in 2007.

(I have long been interested in Daylight Saving Time. My very first op-ed was an essay on Daylight Saving Time that I delivered on NPR about a dozen years ago.)

With the recurrent energy shortages, I am surprised that there is such resistance to the sort of conservation that really works, such as using Daylight Saving Time to adjust our wake and sleep cycles to the sunlight.

It is pleasant traveling in France in the summer, which based on longitude should be on Greenwich time along with England, but instead is an hour ahead of London; the sun often goes down after 9:30pm. In effect, France and Spain are on double Daylight Saving Time in the summer and single Daylight Saving Time in the winter. This is similar to much of Texas, which should (by longitude) be mostly in the Mountain time zone instead of the Central time zone.

I would recommend that the US generally adopt the practice employed in France, Spain, and much of Texas: moving toward what (based on longitude) would be Double Daylight Saving time in the summer and single Daylight Saving time in the winter.

This site has more on Daylight Saving Time.