Congress Mulls Increasing Daylight Savings Time

“WASHINGTON — If Congress passes an energy bill, Americans may see more daylight-saving time. Pending legislation would begin Daylight Savings Time on the last Sunday in March and end on the last Sunday in November.”

I remember the “fuel shortage” of 1973, in reality a spanking given the US by Arab nations for supporting Israel. Gasoline hit a then-shocking 75 cents a gallon, fuel oil prices jumped as well, and long lines at gas stations became a common sight.

Anyhow, Nixon, Congress, and the US Senate came up with a couple of foolish ideas and turned them into law: year-round daylight savings time, and the nationwide 55 MPH speed limit.

I remember going to school in pitch-black darkness at 7:30 in the morning.

It didn’t take long to realize that year-round DST simply was not feasible. It was abandoned in short order. Unfortunately, it took 21 years before a “deeply disturbed” President Clinton reluctantly signed the bill that gave the states the power to set their own speed limits.

So here we go again.

I believe that the legislators are taking the wrong approach.

They are trying to squeeze more daylight out of days that are naturally shorter because of the tilt of earth’s axis.

Why not pass a law declaring the axis to be perpendicular to earth’s orbit about the sun?

Think of the benefits. Each day would be precisely twelve hours of daylight, twelve hours of night. Why, even the polar areas would get these evenly-divided days. That would curb the widespread depression problems common to northern Canada and Alaska in the winter.

Even the climate would even out and become more temperate, further saving energy dollars.

So come on, Congress. Have the courage to pass a REAL law. And don’t worry about enforcing it, you’re the nation’s lawmakers! You can legislate ANYTHING!