Yesterday I had a rant on the foolishness of Daylight Savings Time. But this is something that hadn’t even occurred to me, the foolishness of four time zones.
First a case against Daylight Savings Time:
It would seem to be more efficient to do away with the practice altogether. The actual energy savings are minimal, if they exist at all. Frequent and uncoordinated time changes cause confusion, undermining economic efficiency. There’s evidence that regularly changing sleep cycles, associated with daylight saving, lowers productivity and increases heart attacks. Being out of sync with European time changes was projected to cost the airline industry $147 million a year in travel disruptions.
She suggests an even more dramatic change which on the surface makes sense.
But I propose we not only end Daylight Saving, but also take it one step further.
This year, Americans on Eastern Standard Time should set their clocks back one hour (like normal), Americans on Central and Rocky Mountain time do nothing, and Americans on Pacific time should set their clocks forward one hour. After that we won’t change our clocks again—no more daylight saving. This will result in just two time zones for the continental United States. The east and west coasts will only be one hour apart. Anyone who lives on one coast and does business with the other can imagine the uncountable benefits of living in a two-time-zone nation (excluding Alaska and Hawaii).
This makes sense to me. I live on the west coast but my wife dealt with people on the east coast. As a result we got up at an ungodly hour in the morning so she could be at work by 5 or 6 am. I on the other hand dealt with people in Japan which meant I was at work until 6, 7 or 8 pm so I could communicate with them. Now this wouldn’t really change my Japan – West Coast issues but it certainly would have had a positive impact on my wife’s West Coast – East Coast dealings. We now live in a 24/7 world. We have light well after sunset and well before before sunrise. My only suggestion would be that the Western Time zone should be a little further to the east.