My mom brought this to my attention today. Usually, Daylight Saving Time (DST) begins on the first weekend in April, and ends on the last weekend in October. President Bush signed into law the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which changes the dates when DST begins and ends to make the range of DST longer.
Instead of DST starting on April 8th this year, DST will start on March 11th. And instead of DST ending on October 28th, it will end on November 4th. This adds a couple of weeks to the DST range.
On the web, there is plenty of additional information on DST in general.
Of particular interest - to me, anyway - is that DST is not for the benefit of farmers, but actually to their detriment, since animals really don’t care what we humans set our clock to.
The real reason for DST is to save the energy used by people when they are home in the evening. If the sun is up later, then people will spend more time outside or not need as much power for lights when they are indoors. By “moving” the available light from the early morning sun into the evening time, we can affect a significant difference on energy consumption, which is good for the environment.
The President’s decision to change the dates for DST is largely based on the hypothesis that making DST longer will create an additional savings and environmental impact. Hopefully, he can find less annoying ways to screw with our lives that result in a larger net impact on the environment. (See the prior Wikipedia link for a list of stuff that tries to do just that.)
