Loving the daylight

We are longtime subscribers and fans of the newspaper industry in general and The New Mexican in particular. But why publish such a negative article about daylight saving time (“Evidence mounts daylight saving time carries risks” March 11)?

The article you cited focuses solely on business, energy and accident data, but ignores important other matters of quality of life. On the current schedule for 2017 we will enjoy approximately 230 days with an hour of additional sunshine late in the day. If you live to be 80 in a daylight saving time state, you will have enjoyed 18,400 such days. And a bit of calculation shows that this adds up to a little more than two years of daylight/sunshine — time for children to play outside, time for us to build up the vitamin D we need, and less time for the sometimes depressing darkness.

The modern world, with Bhutan’s lead, has begun to calculate Gross National Happiness as an indicator more important than Gross National Product. Where do you think two additional years of sunshine would figure in those calculations? Yearround daylight saving time would make that more than three years.

Mark Friedman Santa Fe