Chez Chesler

As we're all enjoying the longer and warmer spring days, with sunset suddenly coming an hour later when daylight saving time kicked in, Congress has buried an extension of daylight-saving time deep in an energy bill where it will never be exposed to any sunlight. It's obvious that all daylight saving time does is take an hour of daylight away from the early morning, when few of us have any use for it, and move it to the late evening. From time to time there are proposals for year-round daylight saving time, with the objection that schoolchildren would be going to school in the dark. School days run too early for modern times, at least in the 99% of places where the children don't have to tend to the farms when they get home from school. I like that I can drop my kids off at school at 8:20am, and still have a little time back home before I have to leave to be at work in time for core hours at 10am, but I could work around it if the school day were an hour later. Instead of setting the clocks ahead an hour, why don't we do everything (except school) an hour earlier, either year round, or during whichever months daylight saving time is in effect? The effect would be the same.