Daylight Saving Time? — The Lost Hour, WW I and — Warm Beer on an Evening…
Warm summer evenings in some countries of the milder climates — your after-work beer turning warm one hour earlier… Well…It’s just a number on a clock’s dial, right? Mere maths? Just a small difference in the clock hand’s placement — or a digit changed?
It’s more… The first large combined effort to change the time was apparently made during World War I: The delivery of war produce was supposed to become easier because train running schedules could be synchronized easier, as well.
War as a reason for fiddling with clocks and ultimately time and thus life of plants, animals — and humans?
The history of daylight saving time initiatives is longer than even I expected on reading up on them. But the facts remain: It’s been considered a simply mechanical way of making business run more smoothly. But has proven to be harmful to health and business numbers when looking at it from all sides.
Energy Saver?
One other argument often brought forward is the power or energy saving effect it could have; but that also has been proven to practically not exist: So many other costs are run up in ‘just’ changing times making the saving effect practically zero.
Children suffer noticeably when the clock is changed forward in spring. Many of those dealing in animal husbandry notice sometimes striking differences in the animals’ well-being as well.
Why so important? — It’s the LIGHT!
Light — just as darkness and water and warmth and cold — is part of the basics of our life on earth:
It determines rhythms of growth and rest, of action and pause, of times to heal and nurture.
Rhythms and their Scientific Backdrop
So-called chronobiology — or circadian biology — is the science that researches the rules and effects of time, light and the rhythms we all are part of on this planet. Whole oceans are moved by tides — another powerful rhythm.
The changes in plants are visible at the light’s hitting them on sunrise — and leaving on sunset. For centuries it had become clear that certain times of the day are better to harvest crops than others. True for tea for example — or herbs, to name only two.
And humans should be unaffected? When it’s become clear too that certain medicines should be taken in the morning and others at night?
I still think that having so-called ‘daylight saving time’ is a mistake. A grave one in some contexts even.
Business and Rhythms and Health…
Our biological rhythms and our health are directly related.
In numbers, you also might say that ultimately business would be affected by people who don’t feel quite well, at least for a week or even a month after changing the clocks. And the overall rhythms of all of us living and breathing beings on this earth are not only billions of years old; they exist everyday and ‘make our day’ — or not…
I for one like to go out with friends or colleagues for a cold drink occasionally, whichever way — and not ‘steam up’ on summer evenings in the not-yet-setting sun an hour longer… 😉
