No Summer Time!

Now it’s March and outside icicles are sparkling gaily in solar beams and the days are getting longer and lighter. Spring is coming and the nature is going to wake up soon. I should be glad but there is something that doesn’t let me, something that gets me to wince in anticipation. I am dismayed for the day as we must move our clocks one hour forward. It’s called “Daylight Saving Time” (DST). I experienced it for the first time when I was nine and since that I could never understand why we should suffer for it. Sleepy people get late to their jobs, they miss their planes or trains, more accidents happen, in all this stress... What for? I want to live in the same time all year round, easy and orderly. No leapfrog every six months, no confusions. I’m for the abolition of the summer time.
     Since Daylight Saving Time began there was always controversy about it. Even from the beginning pundits dubbed it "Daylight Slaving Time". It is power engineering, sports and the tourism industry who argument for daylight saving, while healthcare, transport companies and farmers always have opposed it. So it is business profits and human well-being on the scales. From ordinary citizens you often hear more criticism of this practice.
     Before canceling of Daylight Saving Time in Russia, there was conducted a sociological research which showed that 41% of active working citizens expressed for the abolition of summer time. Among respondents aged over 50 the figure was already 65%. In addition, more frequently than others to stress, fatigue and "nervous condition" caused by this event, people in the age 40-50 years (36%) complained. The respondents believed that time shifts increase the load on the body in the spring and decrease the efficiency of labor. Many people complained about the disorder as a result of ”time leaps”. Such were the results of the survey conducted by recruitment portal www.SuperJob.ru. So why should we torment twice a year? 
     Well, there is an economic argument: to save energy. Does it really work like that? An american research suggests that reached energy saving is almost negligible, but also summer time leads to an increased energy use due to an increase in energy-intensive activities. From the beginning, summer time’s potential to save energy was expected from its effects on residential lighting, but energy usage patterns have greatly changed since then. Now we use much more energy in other ways. Consequently, Daylight Saving Time is not as effective as it was expected. At certain companies where the light is more important you can change working hours instead of time shifts.
     Furthermore, electricity use is greatly affected by geography and climate. In fact, the effective area of the saving time lies within latitudes from 30 ° to 55 °. In contrast, Sweden lies in the polar- and sub polar (precisely over 55 °) latitudes, which makes Daylight Saving Time senseless. Moreover, in the North of Sweden there is almost complete darkness in the winter and midnight sun in the summer, so it’s no idea to use summer time. On the contrary, we only get problems due to it.
     Firstly, it’s technical malfunction. Such devices as computers, telephones, watches do not always “notice” the time transition. It is not such an easy job to translate industrial systems back and forth. To them who work with billing and equipment it takes two working days a year to double-check if there is anything wrong or remained in the old time. Just estimate how many man-hours spent on re-checking the time on the clocks, telephones, alarm clocks, computers, machines etc. throughout the country! There is no saving but spending.
     Secondly, DST has negative effects on health. The need to adapt to time shifts is linked to stress and disease, because it really breaks down the human biorhythm, all of it is annoying, people either oversleep or wake up before time and don’t know what to do during the extra hour. It is quite unnatural when in spring the clock jumps forward and that day has 23 hours, whereas in autumn the clock jumps backward, repeating that hour, and that day has 25 hours. For six months people get used to getting up at the same time, and then they have to accustom to a new time again. Studies have shown that an increase of heart attacks and suicides occur in connection to the time transitions.
     A transition to summer time is always a decrease in sleep for one hour. Thereat it’s difficult to get to sleep at night and to wake up in the morning. You can’t convince yourself that it is time to get up before you look at the clock. Then, sleepy children have to go to school in darkness while sleepy drivers hurry to work. It is real danger!
     So, we do not have any benefit from Daylight Saving Time. Instead, it hits the human immune system, exasperates social tension and causes difficulties with equipment. Finally, it is a survival of the past. I suggest canceling the "summer" and "winter" time. I stand for constant time in the winter, spring, summer and autumn.
     Give us the astronomical time!

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Photo by the author: The Midnight Sun at Gallivare, Sweden.