From arguments in politics to disagreements in the media, America is more divided than ever. There is only one thing we are all united in. One thing that happens twice a year for every American (except Hawaiins and Arizonians, but who really cares about them). To get rid of daylight savings, is to get rid of the glue to our society. Without daylight savings we cannot be the United States, because we are no longer united.
Before I tell you why I love daylight savings, I will tell you how it started. According to CNN, the United States of America first implemented Daylight Savings time in order to save energy for World War I. So, I guess if you don’t have any respect for the millions of sacrifices of the soldiers of World War I, then of course, go ahead and get rid of daylight savings.
This works because households have less of a need for electricity in lighting and appliances during the evening because the sun sets an hour later. The same holds true for early in the morning, when most individuals wake up after the sun has risen. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, over a four week period, 1.3 billion kilowatt hours were saved. This is the amount of electricity used by over 100,000 households in a full year. Personally, I am not a fan of spending more money than needed, or killing my planet with the pollution created by energy generation. However, if you hate both having money, and the planet Earth, then get rid of daylight savings.
Some might say that daylight savings time is an annoying system, maybe you lose some sleep, or just feel generally disoriented because of the time change. And I agree with this, the time change is not very fun. However, I argue that these downsides are insignificant when compared to the objective benefits brought by daylight savings. I think that many people are too greedy in today’s society, so if you don’t like greedy people, keep daylight savings.
Daylight savings is also just kinda fun, when asked about it, yearbook teacher, Lara Willbanks said, “it’s like seasons, we don’t really have seasons in Santa Barbara, so it’s nice to have some change.” I could not agree more, we live in the perfect, almost unchanging climate, it is nice for some change.
There are simply not many real faults in daylight saving. At the end of the day, daylight savings saves us thousands of dollars in energy costs, keeps Americans healthier through increased exercise, and is a tradition that has been going on for hundreds of years. Of course, there are problems with our current system, but they do almost nothing to besmirch the time honored tradition of daylight savings.
