San Diego Lawmaker Proposes End To Daylight Saving Time

This is KPBS midday edition. I Maureen Cavanaugh. It happens again this weekend on Saturday night will be setting our clocks ahead and our two spring forward into daylight savings time that begins at 2 AM on Sunday morning. Lots of people enjoy the extra hour of sunshine but apparently the time change is not universally popular. A bill has been introduced in the California assembly to and daylight savings time. It's similar to a number of anti-daylight saving bills. How did this practice with billing with the time get it start and is it working. Joining me is David Prerau author of these the daylight. David, welcome to the show. Good to be with you Who got the notion to pushing the clock tower in the spring and summer. The basic concept goes to Benjamin Franklin in 1789 and was in Paris and Houston are sweep [ Indiscernible ] and realize if he got up earlier he could write for free with the sun. He thought if everyone got up earlier closer to sunrise. There was no good mechanism to do that so the real idea comes from a man from William [ Indiscernible ] in the 1900s. He proposed moving the clocks forward in the spring and back in the fall. Was it a popular idea with the public? It took a while. He proposed in on in several years and it never got past and did it get enacted until world world one. We got involved with it in -- during World War I one. The standard answer when you ask why -- do we have daylight saving times a lot of the answers come back is because it's good for the dollars. Apparently that is not the case. If the exact opposite. The number one group against daylight the light -- savings time up to the present has been farmers. Primarily because farmers have to follow the sun independent of what the clock says so daylight savings time is in sync with everyone else. Recently in the US farmers haven't been as much opposed to it as previously and that's because with modern techniques and equipment they are not as dependent on the scent as they used to be. David, what are the arguments in support of this time change? Is it really just to have that extra hour or so of daylight at the end of the day? There is quality of life arguments and some specific benefits. The quality of life argument is for most people and extra hour of daylight in the evening and after work and after school is much more usable than extra hour in the early morning so everyone is able to go out and utilize the daylight for most of the year because of daylight savings time and was people like that a lot. There are some specific benefits like most studies show it says -- saves energy, reduces traffic accidents and fatalities, cuts down on crime and it's good for the public health so various countries around the world consider each of those benefits as more or less important but it's generally popular around the world. What to challenge that in a minute. Right now I want to talk about the time change and how it was made in the US. I know we had here in California we had a proposition back in 1949 and the people voted to adopt the daylight saving time. Was it done like that in the United States? In world world one and World War II it was enacted nationally. After both wars the national rule was repealed and became a local option. That was fine between world will one and World War II after World War II it wasn't that widespread but as he got more widespread in 1950s and early 60s it became very confusing where you had -- it was town by town as well as state-by-state. Some places with and some others what it. It became very confusing. What happened the federal government in 1966 pass a law which is what we have today which says any state can have daylight savings time or not whether it wants in its ups for the state to determine but it has to be statewide in a campy town by town and number two it has since the art the federal -- the date that the federal government would set. That's basically the rule we have today. Not all states make the time change? All but two. The two that don't are Hawaii and Arizona and for two completely different reasons. Hawaii is near the equator where the sun rise and the sunsets do not change very much and it's also isolated and doesn't have to be in sync so much with everyone else. Arizona has a completely different reason. Their major population centers are so hot in the summer that whereas in the rest of the country was people would rather have an extra daylight -- but in Arizona it so hot there they don't want it. We had daylight savings during World War II. In the 1970s there was energy crisis and oil embargo that unexpectedly for the US caused an energy crisis and [ Indiscernible ] was looking for the city to save energy. Once the energy crisis ended we went back to six months of daylight saving time since then in the 1980s it has been changed to seven months and in 2007 we moved to eight months of daylight savings time is what we have today. In recent years daylight saving time has become somewhat unpopular. There have been studies about people having sleep problems because of the time change. I know it's just an hour but it disrupts some people's sleep rhythms. There have been studies about days we spring forward and losing our the number of traffic accident increases and a number of all kind of heavy machinery increase even there's a study of links to heart attack and another study out of Illinois found it does not save energy after all. In the face of all this, do you think there are still good reasons that we are changing the clocks? Yes. Those studies are probably true for what they are looking at that you have to think of it this way. The benefit of daylight savings time go on for eight months. 240 days. That negative that they are talk about goes on for just a few days. So the overwhelming benefits over eight months -- for example caught traffic accidents are definitely buy every steady go down significantly due to daylight savings time so even if they went up for a day or two at the beginning the fact that they went down significantly for the rest of the eight months is much more significant so I think some people to make that distinguish between things that happened for a day or two rather than the eight months. The energy study there have been a few small areas that have shown no energy saving or even an increase but primarily the energy studies in the US and around the world in large areas show and overall saving of energy saving. The US Department of energy did a study in 2008 and they found a saving advantage even in the small amount of daylight saving was added in 2007 which was just in March and November. We have this legislation now that has been introduced in California that wants to get rid of daylight saving time. We will see whether or not we continue to set our clocks to spring forward as we have for generations here in the United States. I've been speaking with David Prerau he is author of see the daylight. David, thank you so much. Thank you so much, it's been fun to talk to you.