If you’re like me, yesterday you woke up thinking you still had an hour of sleep. But when suddenly you realized that you didn’t, you had to rush out of bed and get to school. This year, daylight-saving time has come early (three weeks early, in fact), and we don’t have much of a say in the matter.
So why are we moving forward so quickly? Why the rush? If you’ve been watching the news, the reason the United States is moving forward is because Congress believes that if they get Americans up sooner it will cut down on buying oil as well as reduce other things like travel, electricity and gas consumption, and other consumer things that we students and people do each day.
But is it worth it? Some experts say yes. In the article “Clock Change May Jumble Flight Connections” in The Wall Street Journal, Aaron Rutoff says that the “U.S. may find it harder to get a convenient connection and may need to schedule long layovers, say airline representatives.”
Not only will we have a hard time adjusting to the time change, but from the sound of things in this article, so will the airlines. The second reason that we’re moving forward so quickly is because of technology. There is a concern that our computers and other devices may have a hard time adjusting to the time change if we, the consumers, don’t change our devices sooner.
But will it work? Is pushing up the clock the way to go? In the ’70s, President Nixon tried the same tactic. America was consuming oil and we were having fuel shortages. President Nixon decided to change the time, but it caused a crisis because people were consuming oil more quickly. Not only that but parents didn’t like the idea of their children driving to school so early while it was dark.
Overall, speeding up America is not a good idea. And it may not help the economy but instead make it worse. Why fix something if it isn’t broken?
The Senate has made a mistake in the matter of moving daylight-saving time in America. We’ll suffer, because in the end, it won’t help.
Julie Sparkhul is a junior journalism major and the calendar editor for the Daily Forty-Niner.
