Daylight Savings Time Makes Me Feel Sunny

Our lawmakers are hard at work. This time the pressing issue is extension of daylight savings time. The current plan is to extend it by a month total, three weeks in Spring and a week in the Fall. The goal of this legislation is to reduce oil consumption.

I’m no fan of daylight savings. It just means more work for me to change all my clocks. I’d be more in favor of dropping it entirely and picking one damn time scheme. After all, if extending it will save on oil consumption, shouldn’t moving to that time scheme permanently save us even more?

Reps. Edward Markey, D-Massachusetts, and Fred Upton, R-Michigan, must think there is substantial savings to be had. They originally wanted to extend by a whole month on both ends. They must have something to back up that claim. There must be some compelling reason to do this despite concerns about effects on livestock and international flight scheduling (as well as requiring new programming for computers).

Well, if you thought that like I did, you were wrong.

Senate negotiators accepted the new version, along with a call for a study on how much daylight-saving time actually affects oil consumption.

Wait, wait, wait. They haven’t even done a study on how much the move would actually save? Isn’t that putting the cart before the horse, just a little bit? I would think that careful analysis of the pros and cons of a piece of legislation would be the first step before introducing it. I guess I was wrong.

Besides, who needs studies when you have reason like:

“The beauty of daylight-saving time is that it just makes everyone feel sunnier,” said Markey.

and:

Upton noted that the extension means daylight-saving time will continue through Halloween, adding to safety. “Kids across the nation will soon rejoice,” said Upton, because they’ll have another hour of daylight trick-or-treating.

Just thinking about it makes me feel “sunnier”. How about you?

Update: I didn’t even realize how fucked up Indiana is.