There’s also been the claim made that an extended daylight saving time saves people energy costs. In this The New York Times article, a 2008 Department of Energy report was cited saying daylight savings only saved Americans 0.5 percent on their energy bills. Meanwhile, a second study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found the exact opposite: residential electricity demand went up about 1%, and also found an increase in pollution emissions.
Plus, changing everyone’s sleep schedules twice a year can be deadly. In 2020, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine called for the time change to be abolished. Messing with the body’s already-established sleep schedule could lead to an increased risk of stroke, miscarriages, workplace accidents cardiovascular events, and even traffic accidents, The Washington Post reports. “Not only are we sleep deprived but we’re trying to force our brain into a little bit more of an unnatural sleep schedule,” Dr. Rachel Ziegler, a physician in the Sleep Medicine Department at Mayo Clinic Health System, told The New York Times. “If you ask any sleep specialist, I think most of us would be in favor of a permanent schedule.”
According to one study, our bodies don’t actually adjust to daylight savings time. The study suggests we end up losing almost 20 minutes of sleep a night trying to adjust to daylight savings, via The Washington Post.
