Think daylight saving time saves energy? Think again. Or not. {Autoblog Green}

Mar 12th 2007 4:20PM Or perhaps we could make "time" what it is meant to be and have it be an exact measure of when something happened. And rather than trying to give time a different number throughout the year, or even throughout the world, we just leave it as what it is... the measure of the exact time that something occurred.

What the hell does what arbitrary hour we assign something have to do with when we do an event. If we had a single time that didn't change regardless of where you are or what time of year it is, it would better serve its purpose while being less confusing. Just think, when you have a conference call with people across the country or world, you tell them, 10:00 AM. They know exactly when it is, because its the same time. No fumbling with trying to understand why one day has 25 hours and one day has 23 hours every year, just simple, straightforward time.

As for energy savings, if you take the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on making adjustments to computers and loss of productivity due to down computer systems, (even worse... *MOST* hospitals were without their documentation and medication software for hours due to this last time change... making properly addressing the health concerns of patients more risky... and that's just one industry it affected), and apply those dollars toward other energy saving methods--alternative fuels, tax breaks for energy efficient companies, etc, you'd save a lot more energy.

Why don't we just standardize time across the world and have congress (in america, obviously), pass tax changes to benefit companies that do some of the following:

1.) Have work hours during the day, and show reduced energy usage by using natural light.
2.) Employ energy efficient lighting