It might not have saved any energy but it was sure nice to have some daylight left after getting home from work. I was working on getting my firewood logs cut up on the weekends but after the change I was able to put in at least an hour after work each day into getting it done, which sure sped up the job.
I like it and hope they don't switch back.

IMO, Daylight Savings Time has nothing to do with energy saving and everything to do with personal time saving. It is far more convenient to come home with some daylight left to get something done outside. Now this should generate some savings in energy use, but the problem comes with many people not only turning on the lights to get ready for work (which they were already doing), but also walking inside with the sun up and turning on their various electronic toys like it was dark outside.

I always wonder why no one has brought up the idea of limiting the use of blacktop as a road surface. Concrete is more expensive, but would reduce the heat island effect. At the very least there must be way to lighten the color of the road surfaces. Also, I was thinking that it seems like a lot of gas is used (and exhaust expelled) in the efforts of most states Dept's of Trans to mow the median strips of highways. That coupled with the fact that allowing them to grow into wooded areas would cool the highways seems to make this a bad practice. What about the color of most home's roofing shingles? Why black?

I believe that if everyone planted one tree and recycled their garbage we'd have a huge impact.

changing DST was stupid...actually, I wish they'd get rid of DST altogether. It's an archaic concept that was helpful 100 years ago when we were an agrarian farm-based economy, but it's completely useless to us now.

Mark - I have to disagree with you. Very few people would care if it were daylight by 5:00 AM in mid-summer, but many of us enjoy the lingering summer evenings. The energy savings at that time of the year are fairly clear.

Laura:

Very good retort. You are absolutely correct.

Mark:

By all means, stay on standard. Me, I will take all the DST I can get. I'm with Chris, I can get more work done at home.

Brian:

While you make some good points, what does that have to do with DST?

I think it is hardly worth arguing about. It is a 24 hour economy, and people will be using lights and electronic gadgets whether it is daylight or not. DST only changes things by 1 hour anyway. Not exactly a huge impact. Sure, it is inconvienent, but it's a band-aid fix that the governments can use to show they care about the environment even though they don't. They care as long as it doesn't cost anything! Point is, DST is here to stay, and there is nothing we can do about it. I doubt that after the millions of dollars spent to update all of the software systems, our brilliant government will step back out in October and say "oops, my bad....guess we don't need DST afterall, reprogram the entire country again and get rid of it."

Alright mark here's the deal, you must be a city boy, cause there are still plenty of places that are farm based economy, and we need the DST.

For once, I'm going to have to agree with Mark. It was a good idea when it first started,for one it was helpful for the farmers, but on the other hand we didn't have students waiting for the school bus in the dark or getting home after dark so in that sense it is a safety feature for our kids. However, there was no need to extend it any. As the seasons change, the sun rises and sets at different angles so we're automatically seeing a natural change. I guess if we really wanted to save energy we could all get up with the sun and go to bed when the sun sets.

All DST does is show how much control the government really has on us.