Nat Geo explains that one of the major reasons why Daylight Saving Time still exists is because of businesses—people buy more things when there’s more sunlight after work, so we have no one to blame but our own consumerist lifestyles #‎RegulatoryCaptureFTW

(crossposted on Facebook)

The Politics of Daylight Saving Time • The debate around whether to fall back and spring forward has been heating up in state legislatures. • 2015 Oct 28 • Brian Handwerk • National Geographic

And since we’re going to go shopping for the holidays anyway, they can afford to pull the rug out from under us now, and there’s nothing they can really do about the lack of sunlight during the winter (yet) so why bother.

As Andrew C. points out, you would think that electrical lighting would obviate the advantage of natural sunlight at the end of the work day, but you need a certain wavelengths of light to suppress melatonin production.

Now that we have blue LEDs, it would probably be feasible to light up the streets to daylight amplitudes and wavelengths, but incandescent blue light would require temperatures of 6,500K, which is probably energy prohibitive and a serious fire hazard. (For comparison, a standard 100W incandescent light bulb reaches about 2823K)