Are you feeling extra tired this morning? If not, you probably forgot to set your clock to deprive yourself of an hour's sleep.

Yes, daylight-saving time returned to Utah today, and many of us will be dragging around for days (even weeks, according to experts) before our biological clocks get back in sync with the time clock.

We don't know why the Utah Legislature continues to ignore this issue. A Herald Poll showed that Utahns, by a 3-to-1 margin, want to dump the twice-annual clock changes. Pick either the daylight-saving model or the standard-time model, they say, but just stop the madness of the changes.

Neighboring Arizona thumbs its nose at Congress on clock-changing. It doesn't change its clocks, yet schools, businesses and government get along just fine all year long down there. The same would be true in Utah or anywhere else.

Changing clocks was supposed to save energy. In 2005, Congress tried to save even more by widening the gap between clock changes. That's why we're changing in March now, instead of April.

But like so many other things connected with the federal government, the move has been a complete failure.

In 2007, the Department of Energy reported a 3 percent increase in gasoline consumption in March compared to the previous two years on standard time. The extra hour of sunlight after work means more people will drive. Indiana, which straddles two time zones, had its own rules for setting clocks until 2005, when caved in to Congress and passed a law to observe daylight-saving time statewide.

But it's been a flop.

The Wall Street Journal reported that residential electricity jumped 4 percent in Indiana after daylight-saving time was imposed. More air conditioning was being used in the evening hours. Plus people were supposed to keep their lights off until later in the day, but energy savings in the evening were offset by more people using heaters on cold mornings.

It's time to stop the madness. If a single time standard works all year for Arizona, it will work for Utah. Hawaii, the only other state that doesn't change its clocks, has not sunk into the ocean as a result.

Saving energy through clock shifting was a nice theory, but it was simply wrong. A study done for the DOE three decades ago proclaimed that moving the clock to make human activity coincide with daylight saved 1 percent of the nation's electric use.

A lot has changed in 30 years. A study published last year by the California Energy Commission concluded that the extension of daylight-saving time had, at best, little or no effect on energy consumption.

Clock-changing also has even been hyped as a safety measure. Supposedly, people traveling home from work in daylight are safer. But a Canadian study found an 8 percent increase in traffic accidents on the Monday following the shift.

It's been called an anti-crime measure. This is completely unsupportable. Criminals thrive in darkness regardless what their wrist watches might say.

We'd love to see a study on the costs and sheer inconvenience of a whole nation resetting its clocks. For example, when Congress added a month to daylight saving, companies spent millions to reset the times on their computers.

When we spring ahead, as we have today, people rightfully complain that the change jolts them out of an established sleeping pattern. Biological clocks are not as easily reset as the digital variety, and the loss in productivity is huge. It takes a couple of weeks for most people to fully adjust.

Jeffery Hammond, a senior analyst at Forrester Research, told Time magazine that coping with the new daylight-saving time will cost a typical large company $50,000 in labor. That figure, he said, doesn't include missed airline flights or forgotten appointments. Extrapolate that nationally and the cost is staggering.

What can be done about this debacle? It's simple: Pick a time system and stick with it permanently. This would end the headache and the annual sense of jet lag on every American.

The Utah Legislature should follow Arizona's lead.