Wednesday, November 01, 2017
An Open Letter to State Legislation on Daylight Savings Time.
This Sunday, November 6th, another Daylight Savings Time change will happen throughout the United States, in 48 states. Daylight Savings Time was created with the idea it would save fuel, but the effect of that has been quite dubious. In fact, according to an article released by Scientific American, there is actually an increase the energy usage, as can be seen from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-daylight-saving-times-save-energy/.
What is less well known is that there are numerous health effects, including increased strokes, accidents, etc. CNN posted an article recently on this effect, as can be seen at http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/11/health/daylight-saving-time-health-effects/ It seems that there are no benefits.
The Congressional Research Service has collected much research on the subject, as can be found in a report at https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44411.pdf . From a survey of articles, there seems to be a belief that any energy usage is minimal, but might be a slight increase in energy used. There are some memory issues also associated with Daylight Savings Time.
There are two states that do not observe Daylight Savings Time right now, Alaska and Arizona. I lived in Arizona for a number of years, and I can say that it is a positive change overall. According to the US Uniform Time Act, https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/STATUTE-80/pdf/STATUTE-80-Pg107.pdf , each state has the ability to choose if it will honor daylight savings time or not. I would encourage you to consider such legislation, as this practice seems to serve no practical purpose. I understand that the way that the US Uniform Time Act is written, the choices are to have Daylight Savings time at the time that the US states it should be, or not at all, which would make the daylight hours early, but given the consistency it would make things much easier.
Thank you very much for all you do!
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