Dear Marcel,

This is a perverse question, but actually something stuck in it.

On the one hand, we can say that as we sleep an hour longer, it we will have about an hour a day less this time for effective action towards environmental protection.

However, on the other hand, from many years, we observe the different official activities, which - if not to change the duration of sleep - dictate the time of the day, in which the sleep is "the most reasonable economically". I mean in this place about seasonally treatments made ​​the time change from winter to summer and vice versa.

Sleeping is a pessimistic and negative thought in this regards and over sleeping would reduce the creative thinking and resultant productivity. Instead, we should be alert and act against environmentally non-friendly actions.

Marcel kindly do not make people lazy by suggesting this. Excess of sleeping is not at all a good habit as well people become lethargic in many aspects. Sleeping is good only for babies and senior citizens (old people).

If at all we want to protect environment all should cooperate then only it is possible. But I believe at certain stage it is highly difficult to manage/stop some activities. We have made the initiation we cannot stop using certain things. For eg. CFC do we stop using ACs, refrigerators, travelling by jet planes. Hatem asked about emissions from motor vehicles to get an idea, does anybody stop using motor vehicles? I believe nobody.

I think it does contribute very little. After all, the entropy generated by sleeping ("one hour at least") is not truly significant.

From a theoretical standpoint we can come back to the distinction we all know, namely the difference between conservationism and/versus preservationism. Rather tough disputes have arisen around both positions - not without good justification.

Nature does deserve a more active practice on our behalf. After all, the ongoing sixth extinction is being produced by human beings (in general), and by the free-market system (in particular). By this a do not mean to say that sleeping is not an active process - but it is too much passive. (Apologize, to my own taste. Yet, I am open to fine arguments…).

I appreciate thoughts of Carlos, Jetty and Lijo. On a lighter note more sleep in countries where I am means additional electricity in terms of cooling.

But guess sleeping is not a solution that can lead to reducing the carbon footprint. actually reduction should come from awareness and conciousness. we need to adopt a greener way of living. We should work not only work on reducing the 30 giga tons of CO2 that we produce but also try to develop methods for using the 770 giga tons that nature produces. Look can we have more algal ponds and biofuel generated from this?

Sleeping definitely contribute to environment protection to some extent. While sleeping we cannot drive bikes or cars, we cannot smoke, we cannot cut trees etc so it reduces air pollution to some extent also sometimes it helps in conservation of resources to some extent.

But an extra hour of sleep will not contribute significantly to environment protection according to me. Also even 1 extra hour of sleep can cause much loss to economy.

Regards,

Nitish

Dear Marcel,

This is a perverse question, but actually something stuck in it.

On the one hand, we can say that as we sleep an hour longer, it we will have about an hour a day less this time for effective action towards environmental protection.

However, on the other hand, from many years, we observe the different official activities, which - if not to change the duration of sleep - dictate the time of the day, in which the sleep is "the most reasonable economically". I mean in this place about seasonally treatments made ​​the time change from winter to summer and vice versa.

I think many people do not sleep enough. They want to be occupied all the time, to be busy, ..... If the 7 billion people on Earth would sleep for one more hour (cf. time-out like in sports), environmental consequences should be substantial, and why should this be perceived as negative? As mentioned above, animals are able to hibernate for months.....

Marcel interesting to see your defense comparing to animal hibernation. That is only suits for animals because of environment. For your information "Before entering hibernation, animals need to store enough energy to last the entire winter". It is not possible for humans; we had to eat in limits.

I agree as you said some people may not sleep enough "insomnia" this is another disorder. One thing if humans want to work intelligently and healthily they do need to take enough rest that is ultimate. One more thing some people who sleep less work very punctually and intelligently. Eg. All political leaders how long they sleep!! As per science 5 hrs deep sleep is more than enough for a healthy and normal person.

Our main point for discussion is to protect environment. For that all Govt. needs to make important legislations against environmental deterioration rather than sleeping less time etc. For eg. in cold countries like Iceland, Finland can you exist without using radiators you freeze with in no time. Kindly change your motto to sustain environmental degradation and suggest suitable ideas.

Finally as per my mythology may be it suits for all “janmanan nara janma uttamam” means among all these 86 lakhs species animals human birth is the best and it cannot come easily. So let us use our intelligence for useful things making the society advance in all aspects. Thanks for raising the interesting topic.

I do not believe that we need to analyze the matter subjectively [ie "if you sleep the right time, your will produce better"], or by anthropologist principia ["sleeping is a passive attitude"], or biological-evolutionist keys ["human body couldn't assume big energy reserves because it wasn't programmed for it"].

The question should be related to what we call Systemic Drift. That is, we must ask ourselves if our cultural structures are diverting our ecosystem towards exponential consumption, if diversion runs at excessive speed, and whether this will be sustainable.

Whatever the answer, the weak point is not in the human being per se, but in his tendency to over-engineer his habitat.

Habitats that can not go off, are inherently more consumerist — much before to be "active” or "passive", "biotic" or "robotic", more or less "productive", in principia.

On the contrary, habitats that could go off for a number of hours per day, are inherently more balanced.

If our hyper-engineered ecosystem looses its balance, determining the need to an "Non-Stop" super-organism — say, due to the formula "invest all the time not to lose investments", placed at the highest levels of its ultra-engineered eco-mechanism — then all of us will get used to the idea of a system always awake. For example, we will use robots to stay awake in our place [or sleep…].

Thus, very soon we will consume our habitat.

It is true that the dynamics of entropy can be treated as a differential.

But because of our ultra-engineering, a differential equation, non-linear, homogeneous, will drift the proportionalities in our safe biological limits.

I have to agree with Marcel's view about "linear" interventions on human activities, such as sleep to wake ratio.

If people work hard because hard working people are respected by the community because of culture or religion, the environment might become fully artificialized..... Is this sustainable at a long term basis?

Tomorrow European time will change: 2 h becomes 3 h. This change in timing has been imposed to reduce energy expenditure, and thus to protect somehow the environment.

People might claim that in these conditions citizens will sleep less to reduce energy expenditure.

Are there different approaches that link sleep to environmental protection: (1) How long to sleep, versus (2) when to sleep?

Marcel is it to save energy?? I am not sure.

As per geographic location day time gradually increases so they change time I mean reduce 1 hr per day.

Some of the Nordic countries (not all) change their clock. For eg. Finland change. I see the same trend in Ireland too. But Iceland do not change, there 6 months continuous light some times partial darkness and 6 months dark of course we see Sun for a while and He disappears soon.

Hello Ms.

Some claim it is to save energy (following the European oil crisis in 1973?) , others claim it is not that efficient in some geographic regions, as you say. I agree that not all what we call European countries are concerned.

Yes, Iceland say they are not member of EU (European Union), they exchange Euro but not accept the currency in many shops. Oil crisis is there in most of the countries. Let what ever be the reason I used to think basing on geographical location and longer day and nights compared to equatorial countries, some countries adjust their clock but some are not. I too agree.

I think answer to the question is YES. At least environmental degradation caused by our habits would stop during our sleep time but it also depends on our attitude towards nature/environment . For example, when a smoker is sleeping then he will not be damaging the environment.

Yes in terms of energy saving and environment protection and its resource. Additional advantageous would be less noise pollution, less accident, less stress and longer life , ...

Dear Marcel, if we do what you suggested definitely after 16 years or so we can sleep all day and night as people do in Alaska sometimes.

Yes. I completetly agree with Professor Mahmoud that sleeping contributes to environmental protection in terms of energy saving and other resources.

Between many theories on sleeping, which I am not so familiar, one is based on Energy Conservation Theory! 

http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/healthy/matters/benefits-of-sleep/why-do-we-sleep

Dear Ljubomir,

Not so easy to find that published theory!

Dear All,

Is it possible that body signals indicating necessity for sleep take environmental factors into account besides the day-night cycles and their relationships with biological rhythms? E.g. Resource depletion might be reflected in consumed food quality promoting sleep to induce sustainable resource restoration?

Dear @Marcel, the attached figure represents  "Activity-driven changes in sleep-regulatory substances regulate sleep at the local level.During waking, environmental input to a neuronal assembly induces environmentally relevant outputs (that is, patterns of electrical and chemical signals from the network to other brain areas), contributing to cognitive and motor responses. Prolonged activation of a neuronal assembly induces sleep-regulatory-substance-mediated changes in the network's electrical and chemical outputs, which eventually results in a state shift (that is, from awake-like to sleep-like) of the local network. Thus, during sleep, the same environmental inputs result in a different output. As output is now not directly relevant to the environment, there is a need to prevent the animal from behaving; in other words, there is a need for unconsciousness."

Thus, regarding your previous answer, there is interaction with environment (body signals)!

http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v9/n12/full/nrn2521.html

No, sleeping people consume oxygen, they produce carbondioxide and they don't reduce planet's population

As an approach it can be a pessimistic approach. However, being proactive participant of the life we must contribute our active role for environmental protection. Technically we consume less resources when we are sleeping but when we are active our role may be greater than just conservation. 

I think, it has not been assessed that how many hours of sleeping would how much tangible and/or intangible impacts (positive or negative) on the environment.