Blog

Lighter Later: Year-round GMT+1/+2 is a bright idea

Anna Guyer | 02.04.10

The Lighter Later campaign is a brilliant idea whose time it is to shine. Organizers are rallying the public to get behind an effort to shift Britain's clocks ahead one hour -- all year long. That would mean GMT+1 in wintertime, and GMT+2 in summer. From the campaign's site...

Moving Britain’s clocks forward in this way has the potential to:

1. Cut at least 447,000 tonnes of CO2 pollution – equivalent to more than 50,000 cars driving all the way around the world – each year
    
2. Save 100 lives each year and prevent hundreds of serious injuries by making the roads safer
    
3. Lower our electricity bills by maximising the available daylight and reducing peak power demand
    
4. Create 60,000–80,000 new jobs in leisure and tourism, bringing an extra £2.5–3.5 billion into the economy each year
    
5. Reduce crime and the fear of crime
    
6. Help make people healthier and tackle obesity by giving people more time to exercise and play sport outside in the evening
    
7. Save the NHS around £138 million a year through reducing road casualties
    
8. Improve quality of life for older people
    
9. Make the nation happier – including reducing the effects of Seasonal Affective Disorder
    
10. Demonstrate that dealing with climate change can be good for the economy, good for people and good for society as a whole
    
    (website lists citations for all data above)

Visit LighterLater.org to sign the petition, and also see their interesting history of GMT, how the Summertime act came to be in 1915 (quite surprising) and the evolution of shifting clocks from then on.

Is the idea of adding daylight hours to save energy so simple and obvious that it's been overlooked too long? It requires no technology and no expense.

And everyone is cheerier when it stays light later.

I'm in.

Environment Green Living | Share + | Comment
gmt, energy saving, clock, lighter later, britain, time change