The House this week passed a measure, the Sunshine Protection Act, that would set America’s clocks to daylight saving time permanently once it clears the Senate and is signed into law by the President. The bill itself raises no ethics issues at all: it is the reactions to it and the reasons, real and alleged, for those reactions that ping ethics alarms.
The headline is tongue-in-cheek, incidentally. Most of my life I heard that Daylight Savings Time was Ben Franklin’s idea. Ben was an amazingly prolific innovator and out-of-the-box thinker, but he was not the originator of the practice, so we can neither blame him nor praise him. Another myth is that DST was implemented for the benefit of farmers. Actually, farmers have been one of the strongest opponents of DST because the factors that influence farming schedules, like dairy cattle’s readiness to be milked, are dictated by the sun, so clocks going back and forth just complicates things. In general, Retailers, sports, and tourism interests like daylight saving, while agricultural and evening-entertainment interests do not.
Personally, I just want one time in place all year, because the changeover is traumatic for me whenever it happens. I have a long list of screw-ups, missed deadlines and meetings on my record. I bet no year has ever passed without one.
Like so many policies, the Daylight Savings Time tradition has had and continues to have all manner of unintended consequences, and those are controversial too. There is some data that shows that crime and accidents are reduced by DST, but precise causation issues make such data inherently dubious. A 2017 analysis of 44 studies concluded that DST leads to electricity savings of 0.3%, but we now know, or should, we can’t trust studies because we can’t trust the reseachers who perform them. Ditto for a 2017 study in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics that estimated that “the transition into DST caused over 30 deaths at a social cost of $275 million annually,” primarily by increasing sleep deprivation. Another study claimed that hospitals see a 24% increase in heart attacks and a 6% increase in fatal crashes each year when the time changes.
President Trump has advocated permanent Daylight Savings Time, so that’s enough for the Axis of Unethical Conduct to oppose it. Predictably, the Washington Post rushed to publish “Why standard time is better for your health than daylight saving time: A proposed bill would make daylight saving time permanent. But standard time is actually better for your body, according to science.”
According to science! Even the Post’s readers tended to agree that this take was hooey. A typical reaction:
Ethics Alarms 
My only issue with permanent Day Light Savings Time is that we would technically have to celebrate New Years Eve at 1 AM. We won’t, and that will bother me all my live long days.
Having lived in China for several years, where the whole country has one time zone (even though it stretches five time zones), I can say it’s a bit weird, but like all things, we will adjust after a while. The problem with the current method (and I suspect this is why those studies might be flawed) is that we are constantly having to adjust.
Well, Arizona does not observe DLS and seems to fucntion fairly well, avoiding major time calamities as a result of the rest of the nation switching its clocks every six months or so. This is a proverbial tempest in a teapot and/or much ado about nothing and/or . . . . well, you get my point.
jvb
I don’t know if that’s better or worse than India’s half-hour out of step single time zone of UTC+5:30, adopted to avoid having two separate zones of 5:00 and 6:00, so now completely out of sync with everywhere else.
I prefer permanent Standard Time, because I would prefer local noon to coincide as closely as reasonably possible with solar noon. In DST where I live, solar noon is actually happening at nearly a quarter to two in the afternoon. Why bother having time zones at all if we’re not going to track with the actual position of the sun?
It’s not as though the amount of daytime/nighttime changes when we adjust the clocks. The sun is visible for its allotted time, then the earth spins us into darkness. Leave the clocks alone and just let us experience the joy of the day. Standard time, DST…who cares?
That’s just ridiculous.
A recent study from the JAMA revealed that 100% of people die at the end of their lives.
We shouldn’t focus on the sunrise / set times along… Roughly 30 minutes before sunrise and 30 after sunset (latitude and seasonal dependent) is a time called ‘civil twilight’, which means that the sun is 6 degrees or less below the horizon. At that point, you can still differentiate colors without artificial light or carry on normal activities (like finishing your last hole on the golf course). Roughly 30-40 minutes before/after civil twilight is ‘nautical twilight’ where the sun is 6-12 degrees below the horizon. This is the point where you can still make out the horizon but you need artificial light to conduct normal activities…
I’m officially a don’t care one way or the other, but just want it settled one way or the other or the other..
Nautical twilight as it is named is typically at that level of visibility on the ocean. It’s a bit more obscure on land.
Civil twilight is when we start having or start losing but still have usable light.
How bout astronomical twilight…?
Just remember, wake up before civil twilight because that’s when the French and Indians attack.
Hawaii and Arizona get to celebrate this bill. Hawaii is on a permanent exemption from DST. They will now enjoy a constant 2 hour time shift with the west coast of the continental US. Arizona is on permanent DST and now will have the same time as their neighbors to the West and North year round.
Not quite – Yes, Arizona and Hawaii are on permanent Standard, which is the choice each state has always been permitted, but the federal legislation is making “Daylight” permanent.
You are correct that Arizona would now be pegged in Pacific Daylight…except the Navajo Nation portion of Arizona which does observe DST, so that part of Arizona will match it’s neighbors of Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico on Mountain Daylight (This keeps the Navajo Nation in one time zone.)
For Hawaii – they will remain on Standard while California is on Pacific Daylight, this is a 3 hour shift. The confusion might arise from the “Hawaii-Aleutian Daylight” named time-zone. The Aleutian part of Alaska did observe DST, so they will now be fixed to DST. In the past, they would align with Hawaii in the Winter.
So now, if passed, the time-zones will be:
Eastern -4:00 UTC
Central -5:00 UTC
Mountain -6:00 UTC
Pacific -7:00 UTC
Alaska -8:00 UTC
Aleutian -9:00 UTC
Hawaii -10:00 UTC
I am unaware if any other changes are contemplated by the legislation passed by the House or if the Senate will make further modifications, but I assume each state will still have the opportunity to elect Standard time and for those that have previously made that choice to keep it.
“Permanent” DST was tried in 1974 under President Nixon due to the OPEC oil embargo. It was for 2 years and lasted only 8 months. No discernable economic or health conditions were seen. I’m confused. If New York UTC will be -4 when it used to be -5 where did that hour go? Will planes fly faster from London to make up that hour? I’m glad that I live in Arizona where we don’t have such nonsense.
THIS. SO MUCH THIS.
Forget that there were not discernible economic or health benefits.
In the winter time, when the sun was not coming up until roughly 9AM during permanent DST, there was a marked increase in traffic accidents involving children who were either walking to school or waiting for a bus IN THE DARK. That was one of the biggest impetuses for repealing the permanent DST back then.
So can we please just stick to standard time and not kill any more innocent school children?
There’s literally nothing in the world preventing people and businesses from adjusting their own schedules to start and end earlier for the benefit of those who love their “extra daylight” without forcing everyone else to make their clocks wrong on purpose.
Permanent DST isn’t just stupid, it’s Sofa King Stupid.
–Dwayne
Of course, nothing stops schools from also adjusting their schedules. And as many have pointed out, it is getting light well before sunrise.
The worries caused by the anti-Trumpers with DST vs Standard Time are ludicrous. Trump, as he does so often, found the 80 side of an 80/20 split and decided to do something about it. We can talk about his methods, we can talk about his mistakes, we can talk about his personality, but we really can’t deny that most of the US would like to stop changing our clocks multiple times a day. As a parent, Spring Ahead and Fall Behind are the worst two weeks on either side of the new year. It takes up to two weeks for babies and toddlers to get used to the new time zone, and unlike tweens, you can’t just tell them to suck it up and let you get some sleep. My personal view is that no matter which is chosen, permanent DST or permanent Standard, there will be people who hate it and decide we should go back. There will, however, be a majority of people who are just happy they can fix the clock on the oven once and leave it. The car will either finally be correct, or will remain one hour off for the life of the vehicle. Normal people will finally not have to care about missing or showing up early to church services/Mass on Sunday morning. My husband will not have to figure out what to do as the offline master timekeeper keeps screwing up twice a year by design. (The rest of the screw ups will still keep him busy, thanks, corporate decisions and Microsoft.)
What I have found most entertaining about this whole mess has been the news reports I keep reading. My favorite, from last week, was titled, “The House will vote on whether or not Daylight Savings Times stays, but there are many things standing in the way of this becoming reality.” Reading the article made me revisit all my kids’ school books. The gist of the article was that while it looked favorable that the House might pass this, we still needed the Senate to pass it, and even if the Senate passed it, it would still have to be signed by “gasp” Donald Trump. I continue to get articles like this in my news feed every day, emphasizing how a House vote does not legislation make and how we still need the Senate and President to agree on it too. Why is the 250 year old process of turning an idea into law considered news? My eldest kid knows that a House vote is not the end, though she thought the order was that the Senate got the bill first and then the House, so by her logic only the President’s signature is needed after the House vote(note to self, spend more time here). Can a journalist really be or think others are dumber than a twelve year old?
“Only the white man can think that cutting off an inch from the top of a blanket, and sewing it onto the bottom of a blanket, makes a bigger blanket”–Some Native American Some Time
I don’t have a citation at hand, but I’ve read (somewhere) that what people REALLY say they want is more sunshine in the afternoon, during the winter months, and more sunshine in the morning, during the winter months. This is because people who answer surveys are often idiots.
In China, they somehow manage to have just one time-zone for the whole country. The usual work day starts at different clock-times in different regions, but if someone wants to hold a video call at noon, it’s noon for all of them at the same time. Noon is before lunch for some, and after lunch for others.
I cannot get my friends and family to simply use Coordinated Universal Time (formerly, and imprecisely, known as Greenwich Mean Time).
Since China is a giant ant colony it makes sense to have a really stupid rule like that.
I for one am glad Congress is knuckling down and hammering out the serious problems facing our republic.
With Daylight Savings Time made permanent, our elections will be secure and we’ll never have a problem with illegal immigrants backdooring their way to citizenship again!