In France, two hours ahead of the sun

SAVIGNAC-DE-MIREMONT, DORDOGNE, France, March 26 (UPI) -- Next weekend, despite repeated assurances over the years to the contrary by vote-seeking politicians, France plunges yet again into what we call summertime -- by which we mean what the rest of the world calls daylight saving time.

There are many excellent reasons why France should not inflict this nastiness on itself year after year. But so far, ever since it was brought in a quarter-century ago, no government has had the guts to scrub it.

Daylight saving time was a World War I British invention. In 1940 the occupying Germans applied it to France, putting the country on Berlin time, the detested "heure du Boche", or "Boche-time." Never again, said the French upon liberation in 1944.

But in the mid-1970s, a French government imposed double summertime from spring to autumn. And France has been paying the price ever since.

A recent European Union resolution recommends that member states adjust their official times to their geographical time zones -- in other words, to "natural sun time."

The recognized time zone system takes what used to be known as Greenwich meantime, now called universal time or UT, as its zero point, adding one hour for every 15 degrees of latitude eastward.

Double summertime was introduced in France by presidential decree (meaning no parliamentary debate, no vote) in the mid-70s, as a knee-jerk reaction to the world oil price crisis.

A hastily produced report claimed that being two hours ahead of the sun in summer would save France 300,000 tons of oil a year. But, even had it been true, this was only part of the story. No account was taken of other factors, such as decreased productivity caused by making people live two hours ahead of their biologically natural time, with the resulting fatigue, illness, and absence.

For the nearer people live to their natural sun time, the better for their, and therefore the nation's, health and economy. Adults and children alike are less productive if forced to live out of kilter with their biological clocks.

Like Britain and the Iberian Peninsula, France lies in the natural "zero" time zone. But since 1976, our clocks have been one hour ahead of zero from November to March, and two hours ahead from April to October.

The more daylight hours a country has (which depends on its distance from the equator), the more easily it can create an illusion of "extra" daylight hours by putting the clocks forward in summer.

But France is at a geographical hinge-point. Daylight hours are shorter, even at midsummer, in Lyon than they are in Sheffield. With its longer daylight hours, Britain is a good candidate for summer time; France, being too far south, a poor one.

A few years ago our then prime minister, Alain Juppé, asked Brussels if France could please stay on UT-plus-one, our customary wintertime, all year round. You must be joking, was the unanimous response of European transport ministers, who deal with things like airline timetables: It was you French who got us all into this mess in the first place so you could save yourselves some imaginary money in the '70, and now you can just lump it. Thus what could have been Europe's first sensible debate on the matter went down the plughole.

Of course Monsieur Juppé should not have asked permission. He should simply have told the rest of Europe what France was going to do, and then done it, if necessary telling Europe just what it could do with its clocks in the process.

Our governments have done nothing about it since, despite the overwhelming evidence that living two hours ahead of the sun is bad for everyone whose working day is governed by timetables -- and that means all factory and office workers for a start and, more important, all schoolchildren.

But the Council of Europe has finally recognized the unavoidable evidence. Being two hours ahead of the sun for seven months may make some people believe they really get "more" daylight hours. But it pollutes our cities far more than if we were on sun-time or only one hour ahead of it, and it causes significantly more skin cancer, to mention only a few of the nefarious effects.

France and Spain are the only European Union countries whose official time is so far removed from their geographical time zone. (Portugal, in the same time zone, also went two hours ahead for a while, but has since thought better of it and gone back to UT in winter and plus-one in summer, like Britain.) The Council of Europe has named no names: but everyone knows which members are targeted.

Organizations in France that oppose the present system include farmers and ecologists, doctors and teachers. But this is a country where grass-roots movements can take ages to develop beyond the level of the small association.

And they do not speak with one voice. The "Association Contre l'Heure d'Eté Double" (association against double summer-time) opposes the two-hour advance on the sun and advocates dropping back an hour all year round. "La Méridienne" largely agrees, although its core members favor sun time all year round.

All the opposition groups are now clamoring for the government to say it will follow the Brussels resolution.

No one who looks at the facts can conscientiously support our present system. If we went back to zero-time, France would give a massive sigh of relief. We could still please Europe by shunting the clocks forward for the agreeable illusion of an extra hour of evening daylight, a move that at our latitude is still just defendable.

The government could bring it about in a moment by decree, thus reversing the unreasonable, undemocratic and counterproductive emergency measure imposed on the country a whole generation ago. It is only a matter of common sense.