WHY ON EARTH?
Twice a year, some 40% of the world’s population change their clocks. Not always on the same date, or at the same time, not always by the same amount, and not always everywhere in individual countries. Other parts of the world used to, but now don’t and many never have. Some, such as Samoa, gave up an entire Friday to be in a different day altogether. In some countries surveyed (such as Germany), the majority wants it to stop, in others (like New Zealand), to continue. In most countries which do change clocks, there is usually disagreement between North and South, and urban and rural.
The amount of daylight each day varies with where you live. Near the equator, day and night are nearly the same length (12 hours), so there’s not much point changing (other than to relieve the monotony of watching the sun rise and set at EXACTLY the same time every day). But elsewhere on Earth, there is more daylight in the summer than in the winter.
It is called Daylight Saving Time (DST), or ‘Summertime’ but where did all this start, and why do we still do it? Or, in many places, not do it? And why is it called ‘saving’ when it’s merely moved from one end to the other?
Reason 1. ‘To save energy?’.
The first state to adopt DST was Germany in 1916, as a way of conserving coal during the War, followed not long after by the UK and US and many others for much the same reasons. Most abandoned it after the war, brought it back for World War Two, and again during the 1970’s energy crisis. However, a major study in 2017 found just a 0.3% saving in electricity during DST!
Reason 2. ‘So we can play golf longer on summer evenings?’
It turns out that many of the earlier proponents of DST had good personal reasons for wanting longer summer evenings. George Hudson was an NZ entomologist and liked to collect insects in the early evening. His 1895 paper to the Wellington Philosophical Society proposed a TWO-HOUR shift. Englishman William Willett published The Waste of Daylight in 1907. He did mention that it would reduce the use of artificial lighting, but his main purpose was the increased enjoyment of evening sunlight. Willett was a keen golfer and did not like stopping play at dusk. He lobbied for the change until he died in 1915.
Major surveys support this view. ‘At the end of the day, energy saving is not the big driver,’ said one expert. "It's people wanting to take advantage of that light time in the evening." Farmers, meanwhile, complain that they LOSE an important hour of morning sunlight in the summer. You just can’t please everyone. Except golfers.
Forward or back?
When it comes close to the time for changing clocks, the main question (other than WHY?) is ‘forward or back’. Even though most of us have done it twice a year for our entire adult lives, we still can’t remember which, when the time comes around again. So we have invented a useful phrase – ‘Spring forwards, Fall back’. (But then you have to look up what ‘Fall’ is..)
It’s a bit of a hassle each time but, helpfully, most of our devices now change time automatically. The clocks in our microwave, oven and car are, however, so complicated, it is easier to wait for six months for them to be correct again.
A better idea?
If there’s no real energy gain and if we simply arrange to go out earlier to the golf course, why not do away with DST altogether? Instead, we could change our clocks once every week. In this way we could give ourselves an extra hour in bed every Saturday night – and take that hour back out of Monday mornings.
We’d all vote for that! Except for golfers who have a Monday morning comp.