Posted by QuickReadAbout.com Staff in “Spring ahead, Fall back”. How does the 4-weeks-extended Daylight Saving Time affect us starting March 2007?
Every first Spring Sunday of April at exactly 2am, we have been setting our clocks one hour ahead, and every first Fall Sunday of October we have been setting our clocks one hour back to return to the standard time (1986 DST amendment). Now starting the year 2007 (2005 Bush Administration amendment), “Spring ahead” will start on the second Sunday of March (11th), and “Fall back” will be on the first Sunday of November (4th) (President Nixon’s 1973 DST Energy Act also extended the period to respond to the 70’s energy crisis).
Within the DST time period, the standard names of each of the time zones in the US also changes. The word ’standard’ in Eastern Standard Time (EST), Central Standard Time (CST), Mountain Standard Time (MST), Pacific Standard Time (PST), and so forth will be changed into ‘daylight’.
Why follow such strange time changes and create such more confusion in 2007? First, Daylight Saving Time is not at all confusing if we just remember the “Spring ahead, Fall back” phrase, and all the changes including the time acronym changes, do not work for no good reasons.
Daylight Saving Time is a six-and-a-half-month period that allows us to use less energy in electrical or fueled lighting by taking advantage of the longer and later daylight hours available during the Spring and Summer seasons. And not only does following the DST schedule make us conserve energy. From another perspective, Daylight Saving Time also reduces crime rate and travel accidents as during this period, people get the benefit of doing their later-day or after-work errands and traveling during a time when there is still sufficient daylight available. – Very clever right? This idea (started by Benjamin Franklin in his “An Economic Project”) in fact was observed as early as WWI and WWII (President Roosevelt’s “War Time”) in order to save energy for war production by taking advantage of the later hours of daylight between April and October. However it wasn’t until the 1966 Uniform Time Act (under President Johnson) that we are made to follow the same rule even if it is not a time of war (except equatorial Hawaii, Arizona, and American Samoa currently). Also just recently, the EU nations have been following its own version of Daylight Saving Time (standardized in 1996) which runs from the last Sunday of March until the last Sunday of October.
The regular observance of the Daylight Saving Time makes every time a time to save energy. Although Canada and airline international flight schedules are compelled, perhaps now is just the time to have more time for saving more at daylight. That’s just how the world revolves.