The United States has just returned to Standard Time after eight months of Daylight Saving Time. “Saving”—the driving thought behind saving time, when it was started by the Germans during World War I, was to save fuel consumption.

The USA has been on the eight-month pattern since passage of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 which took effect in 2007. This act added five weeks to the previous DST period. And it added a lot of darkness to the mornings … to the point that school children are often getting on the bus before light fully arrives.

A Department of Energy study of the 2007 time extension reported in 2008 just how much energy was saved by the additional five weeks: just 0.03 percent.

We would like to see mornings that are brighter than those experienced in early March and late October, as the clock starts and runs out on Daylight Saving Time. It’s time to fall back a bit more … to the old boundaries between standard and saving time. We would ...