Arizona is known for marching to the beat of its own drum.
From renegade bills like Senate Bill 1070 to an unapologetically permissive approach to gun control, the Grand Canyon State has a proud reputation for unconventionality.
Our stance on daylight saving time is no exception.
Along with Hawaii, Arizona has been letting its freak flag fly for nearly 70 years by refusing to observe the oh-so-trendy time-tinkering policy that has yielded inconvenience and mixed results for everybody else.
For those who grew up here and know only sanity, allow me — a native Coloradan and daylight saving time veteran — to get you up to speed: In March, 300 million or so Americans moved their clocks forward an hour, from “standard” time to “daylight” time, and this Monday they will “fall back” an hour, returning to “standard time.” Then they’ll start all over again next year.
Daylight time is a relatively recent phenomenon.
After being half-heartedly proposed by Benjamin Franklin in a satirical letter to The Journal of Paris in 1784, it was taken up more seriously at the turn of the 20th century.
Daylight time was first applied during World War I and again in World War II as a means of rationing. The idea was to reduce energy consumption by shifting an hour of sunlight from morning to evening during the longer days of the year, thereby reducing the need for artificial lighting.
As soon as the federal mandate was dropped in 1944, Arizona switched back to standard time, which it has maintained ever since — except for a 6-month lapse in 1967, but who didn’t cave to peer pressure in the ‘60s?
Daylight time supporters insist and some studies show that it does in fact decreases energy usage, but its benefits aren’t so obvious in practice.
Altering living patterns affects everything; it can increase usage of things, like heating and air conditioning, which offset any savings realized from keeping the lights off an hour longer.
For example, in 2008, researchers from UC Santa Barbara conducted a study of three years worth of household billing data in Indiana.
Their conclusion about the effects of daylight time: “We estimate a cost of increased electricity bills to Indiana households of $9 million per year. We also estimate social costs of increased pollution emissions that range from $1.7 to $5.5 million per year.”
Daylight time may also have a negative effect on wellness.
According to an article in HealthDay, a recent report in Current Biology showed tampering with time interrupts the body’s internal clock, its “circadian rhythm,” which is more in tune with the sun when we are on standard time.
"This is one of those human arrogances,” explained lead researcher Till Roenneberg told HealthDay, “that we can do whatever we want ... We forget that there is a biological clock that is as old as living organisms, a clock that cannot be fooled.”
Leave it to Arizona to humbly acquiesce to the laws of nature while the rest of the country presumes to make “improvements.”
Daylight time may make sense in some places, but here in the Wild West we do things differently.
Arizona’s independence is valuable, if only as a demonstration that federalism, one of Benjamin Franklin’s worthier causes, is still alive amidst growing fears of expanding centralized power.
Reach the columnist at dcolthar@asu.edu
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