New Growth and Daylight Saving

Cover Image ‘Wild Garlic’ by Mark Furniss Photography

This post can also be viewed in the April edition of the Connemara Journal 

 

The end of March saw the clocks put forward, giving us the welcome pleasure of longer daylight hours with the boon of drawn out days ahead. It’s as if the impatience of early spring is finally sated by the adjustment to summer time and new life is in abundance all at once. I swear that fresh buds and leaves sprung forth over night in my own back garden. The manipulation of time always strikes me as an enormous intervention, albeit a welcome one. Who are we to decide such a thing?

 

Lettuce Seedlings by Mark Furniss Photography

‘Lettuce Seedlings’ by Mark Furniss Photography

 

 

Unfurling Ferb Frond by Mark Furniss Photography

‘Unfurling Fern Frond’ by Mark Furniss Photography

 

 

 

I was inspired to read about the origins of this practice, also known as Daylight Saving Time or DST. I discovered that the idea was introduced in 1895 by a New Zealander called George Vernon Hudson. He worked as a post office clerk but was also an accomplished entomologist, who spent much of his spare time collecting insects. The demands of his occupation and leisure interests provoked an interest in the value of after-hours daylight. In 1895, he presented a paper to the Wellington Philosophical Society proposing a two hour daylight saving shift. While the paper received a good deal of interest, particularly in Christchurch, it was not put into practice.

It took another twenty years before Germany and Austria-Hungary became the first to implement Daylight Saving Time on the 30th of April 1916. The motivation was the conservation of coal during wartime. Britain, along with most of its allies and some European neutrals, followed suit. Russia and the United States followed a couple of years later. Most of these countries abandoned the policy in the years after the war, although there were some notable exceptions, including Ireland. DST was reintroduced in the following decades and during the second world war. Ireland ( and Britain ) experimented with a reversion to pre daylight saving time in 1968. A significant increase in road casualties was recorded in the early hours, as the general population ( including school children ) had to leave their homes in the dark. It is much colder before daylight and more difficult to begin work in darkness – builders, farmers, council workers and delivery men suffered badly. The period coincided with the years leading up to Ireland’s accession to the EEC in 1973, when time in Ireland was the same as in the six EEC countries. This was undone in 1971 under the Standard Time ( Amendment ) Act. DST was widely adopted in Europe and North America in the 1970’s as a result of the energy crisis.

It is interesting that the motivation for manipulating time over the years was largely economic. Historically, there has not been much consideration for the fact that people prefer to wake after sunrise. Longer daylight hours give the population more time to enjoy the natural environment and natural light has a positive effect on mental health that is widely accepted. These may not have been incentives for introducing daylight saving time, but they are the rewards.

Adjustments to DST are still being discussed in Ireland, to bring us in line with CET or Central European Time. This would mean that we would be one hour ahead, in line with Europe, but time would stay fixed all year round. The pros and cons of this are being discussed this month in the Dail, under the Brighter Evenings Bill 2012.

My thanks to Mark Furniss for allowing me to use his photographs. You can see more of Mark’s work on his website at www.markfurnissphotography.ie

 

by Deborah Watkins