At Least They're Not Your Legislators...Oh, Wait

In another edition of our annual "At Least They're Not Your Legislators"....okay, wait a minute, these are our legislators!

Congress is considering extending daylight-savings time. According the the Associated Press:

Extending daylight-saving time makes sense, especially with skyrocketing energy costs," said Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., who along with Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., co-sponsored the measure.

We don't know enough about this to know how this all works, and for all we know it makes perfect sense, but this quote by Markey cracked us up:

"The more daylight we have, the less electricity we use," said Markey, who cited Transportation Department estimates that showed the two-month extension would save the equivalent of 10,000 barrels of oil a day.

Yes, we should absolutely ask the sun for more daylight. Maybe then we can also add an amendment that creates more time. From now on, we will have 30 hours in the day instead of 24, in order to have more time to spend with our families, and 20 of those hours will be daylight. Make it so!

Man, Congress is crazy powerful.

Comments

[poli.hack]

so rather than weed through the thousands of energy saving alternatives already on the table, our u.s. congress resorts to yet another craptastic legislative proposal? I can't believe this dog has bipartisan support.

obviously this hasn't been thought through. updating the clocks in the nation's computer systems would lead to another Y2K-like scenario, costing a helluva lot more than the oil savings mentioned.

[Phoenix Rising]

Aaiiii! Poli.hack's got the right word for this one: craptastic. How about driving biodiesel or enhancing ethanol production efficiency or - anything would be more effective than this (except praying for more oil...)

[peterco]

The theory for the current DST came up in the 70s oil crisis. Since most people get up just before work and go to sleep when it is night, the idea was to shift more of the daylight hours into the evening. That way, less electricity is used (less lights at home turned on, people get do things outside instead of inside, etc.). But gasoline - not really.

Shifting time becomes less useful as the winter approaches, so I don't know if this would really help.

And improving MPG would be the more benficial in the long term than shifting the time when daylight occurs. I'm glad that Amendment 37 passed here.

[Bart]

For Simpsons viewers: This whole scenario reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Mr. Burns erects a giant dish that hovers over the town of Springfield... blocking out all sunlight so that everyone in town will have to use more energy. Exxxxxxcellent.

[ohwilleke]

Apparently Congress has been reading that great French children's classic "The Little Prince.", where the the Prince orders the sun to come up and go down, which it always does at his command (as long as he commands it at the right time).

Seriously though, someone needs to explain to Congress that the proposed savings is 0.05% of daily U.S. oil consumption and that only 2% of electricity is produced with oil.