Author’s Note: my continued analysis and coverage of the Russo-Ukrainian War will resume in next week’s column. Thank you.
Imagine you wake up during the coldest time of the year. Temperatures are in the single digits and barely that with wind chills. There is a nuisance snow squall coming in from the northwest and you are trying to get your kids to school. There is barely a flicker of twilight to illuminate the wintery scene.
That sounds like a normal morning between December and February but now add an extra hour of darkness onto that scene. Schoolchildren will arrive in class in the dark. Your early morning commute to work will be absent all but the dimmest light. Sunrise will not occur until nearly 8:30 AM for weeks.
The United States briefly tried this experiment – permanent Daylight Savings Time – back in the early seventies and everyone hated it. Originally supposed to run for two years, the experiment was halted after just ten months because of an outcry of opposition from Americans plunged into winter darkness.
Squeezing one more hour of daylight in the afternoon was just not worth it with freezing temperatures and miserable weather, especially when the offset was darkened mornings. Say what you will about the winter now but at least it follows the natural cadence of time and lightens our rising in cold months.
Forgetful of near history, the House of Representatives voted – overwhelmingly and bipartisanly – to adopt permanent Daylight Savings Time this week. At a time when Congress has done little to improve citizens lives, this is low hanging fruit to both (a.) do something and (b.) address a perennial complaint.
While I am the last one to discourage Congress from doing something, especially after the successful pro-housing legislation they passed into law a few weeks ago, repeating a bad experiment for the sake of doing something is the definition of institutional insanity and uselessness.
Our current relationship with time – springing forward in March and falling back in November – gives us the best of both worlds: more daylight in the summer evenings and the winter mornings but there is nothing folks, including me, love to complain about more than the short and medium range effects of this.
If we are to adopt a permanent time, we should compromise between Standard Time and Daylight Savings Time at the thirty-minute mark. It would soften the extremes of daylight exposure during solstices while also preventing unnecessary darkness in winter mornings. It would preserve both in moderation.
Alas, this legislation heads to the United States Senate, where I am not optimistic about them stopping it from taking effect. Furthermore, whereas the Congress of yesteryear was willing to admit their mistake and reverse course when they played with time, I fear today’s politicians are more willing to call a shit sandwich delicious when confronted with an e coli outbreak of their making.
Greetings! I am planning a “mailbag” edition of Coffee in Coby soon, so please send any questions you may have for me about Schoharie County politics, the Atlanta Braves 2021 World Series title or whatever else, and it might just be included. My email is timothycknight93@gmail.com. Cheerio.
