One of California’s biggest industries basically ignores Daylight Savings Time.

Cows this Sunday can’t wait an hour later to be milked. Dairy cows expect to be milked every 12 hours. If their milking time is adjusted twice a year, their milk production will suffer.

Farmers also need daylight to work in fields and orchards.

Yes, they also turned their clocks back an hour before hitting the hay Saturday night, Nov. 4.

But almost all will be turning their work schedule back an hour as well.

The augment justifying Daylight Savings Time to give farmers more time is not only archaic but wildly inaccurate. It came about in 1919 during World War I in the United States to conserve energy. Farmers fought it tooth and nail.

This was a time when almost the entire non-agrarian world worked schedules that were more attuned to 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The theory was businesses and manufacturing would consume less energy by taking advantage of daylight during work hours. Then in the 1970s during the Arab Oil Embargo, an experimental switch to 100 percent Daylight Savings Time also to save energy was a dud.

The entire concept of Daylight Savings Time is almost laughable today. Not only do a lot of people not work 8 to 5, but those that do often do so at home.

Those means whatever energy savings is supposedly obtained is likely being wiped out by electricity needs being high at both offices and such as well as households at the same time.

Toss in the fact you would have to turn the clock forward several hours for a large share of commuters in the Valley to ever see daylight as they start heading to Bay Area jobs, and you can see monkeying with the clock for what it is — an exercise in futility.

And it is an exercise that can have unhealthy consequences.

Just like with cows, disrupting the routine of humans can have physical — not to mention mental — ramifications. Disrupting patterns by losing an hour in the spring and then having it restored in the fall has physiological impacts as various studies have shown. To what degree is debatable. For some people it is negligible. For some it’s just a rough spot for a day, if that. For others it lingers for days. And — if some studies are to be believed — it can be deadly, or at least seriously life-threatening.

Sleep Medicine in 2015 published research that compared the rate of strokes around Daylight Savings Time to the rate two weeks before and two weeks after the time change.

Strokes jumped eight percent after the forced loss of an hour.

The consequences for those with cancer were higher as the stroke rate increased 25 percent. They found the rate was eight percent higher the first two days after the shift.

Those over 65 were found to have as 20 percent higher chance of suffering a stroke.

The same trend was reflected in heart attack research and studies of accident rates.

The traffic rate surge for several days was particularly telling, given researchers pointed out interruptions to the circadian rhythm have a tendency to dilute focus and impair judgment.

Despite some waxing eloquently about an extra hour of sunshine to pursue outdoor activities in the summer as a justification for switching back and forth between Daylight Savings Time and Standard Time, fiddling with the clock was never about health. Daylight Savings Time is all about fooling Mother Nature instead of industrial societies making schedule adjustments as the days shorten.

We can force timepieces 100 percent into submission and force people to change at the whim of an act of Congress but nature remains steadfast.

Blooms in setting, opening, and closing do not call on a manmade clock controlled by Congress for guidance.

As for energy savings, we as a society are still hanging onto the assumption the time change does just that as well as keeping people productive working on jobs.

As early as 1775, Ben Franklin penned a satirical letter suggesting turning the clock ahead an hour would reduce the need for candles.

During World War I, when it finally caught on it, was seen as a way to reduce energy consumption to conserve oil as much as possible for the military.

It might have made sense when the world wasn’t running 24/7 and people didn’t burn the proverbial midnight oil.

However, in an age where people start having fun when the sun goes down instead of sleeping or spend the wee hours of the morning trading in bitcoins that require the daily energy consumption of Las Vegas to create, it makes as much sense as whistling into a Category 4 hurricane.

If the legislation the U. S. Senate passed by unanimous consent in 2022 had made it pass the House of Representatives and was signed into law, Daylight Savings Time would have become permanent and clocks would be left alone.

It is how nations such as Iceland, Belarus, Turkey, Argentina, Morocco, and places like Singapore now operate.

If you recall, that is what California voters wanted to do when 59 percent of us approved Proposition 7 in 2018. Nothing happened because states — without the blessing or authority of Congress — can’t switch to year-round Daylight Savings Time.

No one from the California Congressional delegation stepped up to introduce such a measure given the fact it likely would have run into strong headwinds given California’s economic heavyweight status would have posed problems for other states not on the same clock.

The only reason Hawaii and Arizona don’t switch their clocks is because they are on Standard Time year round. Federal law allows states that option but not year-round Daylight Savings Time. The Senate’s 2022 legislation would have allowed Hawaii and Arizona to stay year-round in Standard Time if they so wish.

There was also an effort introduced for the statewide ballot in 2022 by the California Assemblyman Steven Choi that went nowhere. It would have given the California Legislature the ability to switch to year-round Standard Time which is legal to do if the federal government doesn’t grant the right for year-round Daylight Savings Time.

Congress imposing a uniform time on the nation minus the twice a year switcheroo while carving out exceptions for states already in year-round Standard Time would end the debate.

The time change may have made sense back when no one worked on the Sabbath, work weeks were Monday through Friday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and almost everyone headed to bed when the sun went down. But in today’s world it is a nuisance that doesn’t change the habits of few if any of us.

The exception is when it comes to disrupting sleep patterns that change naturally on a gradual basis over the course of the year as we rotate around the sun instead of being forced all at once by governmental dictate.

This column is the opinion of Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinions of The Courier or 209 Multimedia.