The Great Daylight Saving Time Conspiracy

I originally posted this column last year about this time, and it's proven to be one my most popular. So, with the clocks springing forward tonight, and in the service of laziness, I'm re-running it now. Enjoy.

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The Great Daylight Saving Time Conspiracy

OK, not conspiracy per se, but what starts out sounding like a lone-crackpot theory ends up having more to do with the Hell-in-a-handbasketedness of our current world than you might think.



I heard author Michael Downing on NPR last week and was surprised that as I listened to him spin the story of how this recent change to DST came to be, I found myself nodding along with him.

Apparently the golf, outdoor cooking, and candy industries, among others, pushed to extend Daylight Saving Time because of how much more money they will make as a result of the later daylight hours. We're talking hundreds of millions of dollars of additional golf clubs, greens fees, and grills purchased. And, since we won't be falling back until after Halloween, more kids will be out trick or treating, which means more candy. Everybody wins.

Of course, the bill that codified the change wasn't called the Golfing & Grilling Act; it was called the Energy Policy Act of 2005, and the Daylight Saving change was enacted with an eye toward reducing our energy consumption by 1%. On the face of it, this makes sense; the later it stays light, the later we go until we turn our lights and heat on, and the more energy we save (maybe as much as 100,000 barrels, say the co-sponsors of the Energy Policy Act). What this analysis misses, though, is a key point: when Americans have more daylight free time, they spend it in their cars. Whether it's going to the golf course, or heading to the mall to buy a new grill, or just running a few errands, we invariably drive more when it's light out later. While I haven't seen any studies quantifying how much more we drive, I fear that any electricity and fuel oil savings would be more than counteracted by increased fossil fuel consumption, which has the double impact of not only increasing our use of (foreign) oil, but of damaging the environment as well.

Ordinarily I'd chalk something like that up to the Law of Unintended Consequences, but the Energy Policy act was sponsored by Representative Joe Barton (R-TX), a noted climate change naysayer and the recipient of more campaign funding from the oil industry than any other Congressman in the 2004 election. It seems to me that increased oil consumption is exactly the sort of consequence he was intending.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised anymore when our government does something simply because a business lobby tells them it's a good idea. You know, it's funny -- more and more the crackpots are turning out to be Cassandras. Downing's anti-DST stance is a little less crucial than, say, Al Gore's decades of climate change drumbeating, but they are of a piece.

Geez, I started out this post intending to write about how Daylight Saving Time was making me grumpy, and in the course of an hour's research I've found myself knee-deep in big oil and global warming and grumpy for a whole other reason. I guess that's what I get for actually putting some effort into what I write. I promise I'll be back later in the week with some light-hearted observations on parenting or food.