The Launch: Today’s Topic
As we Americans adjust ourselves to this week’s time change, They’re All Lying to US (TALUS) springs ahead with an investigation of the daylight savings time (DST) phenomenon. How did it start? Should it be killed once and for all?
The Download: Daylight Savings Time Recap
Twice a year, almost everyone in North America changes the clock – springing ahead in March to give us more daylight later in the day and falling back in October to standard time giving us earlier sunrises on short, winter days. Maybe I’m just cranky because we just changed our clocks ahead a few days ago on March 10, 2024, but I stand with the majority of Americans who oppose the twice annual ritual. It is time to put DST on trial and I for one favor the death penalty as its sentence.
The Life and Times of Daylight Savings
In judging whether DST should be put to death, it would seem only fair to review its over 100 years of existence. DST has had a troubled life, falling in and out of favor from its birth, barely surviving several middle-age crises, and now being seen by many as an expendable senior.
Former Director of the Time Services Department for the U.S. Naval Observatory (yep, that’s a thing), Dr. Demetrios Matsakis, told NBC News about the “birth” of modern day DST:
“The history says that Benjamin Franklin came up with the idea, although the modern effort actually was by an Australian, George Hudson, in 1895 . . . who wanted more time after work to play . . . and he finally got it to happen in Australia in 1916.”
During World War I, many countries began experimenting with daylight saving principally on the theory that it would save energy. “With more daylight hours, people would spend more time outside and less inside, using up energy in their homes—or so supporters theorized.” Early in 1918, the United States implemented “war time”, a daylight-saving initiative. Born at a time when the U.S. was more of an agrarian society, the lack of early morning sun did not play well with farmers. DST’s end coincided with the end of the War.
DST was but a toddler when it was first sent away after World War I. During World War II, the young adult version of DST was drafted back into service. Once again, as war ended in 1945, DST ended, or should we say, was discharged. From 1945 to 1965, DST was a restless, unruly young adult. The country had no unified policy on DST. Instead, states were allowed to choose their own standard. By 1965, 71 of the U.S.’ largest cities practiced DST, while 59 did not. In 1966, DST finally settled down into adulthood albeit with a split personality. Congress passed the Uniform Time Act: 6 months of standard time and 6 months of daylight saving time.
DST’s Mid-life Crisis
The clearly defined split personality of DST’s adulthood quickly descended into a mid-life crisis. Specifically, the 1973 oil crisis caused Congress to try to reduce energy consumption by putting DST on a two-year trial. In January 1974, the dead of winter, year-round DST was implemented across the United States. Very soon after, Americans had a new crisis every morning. Not only was it darkest before the dawn, but the sun did not rise until an ungodly hour: 8:45 a.m. in Buffalo and nearly 9:00 a.m. in Seattle (not that anyone sees the sun much in January in either location.) Parents were sending their kids to the bus stop with flashlights. A fervor grew over the risk to school children. Michigan’s Governor asked Congress to repeal the law and Florida’s Governor asked the state legislature to put Florida back on standard time after a few school-aged children were killed in early morning traffic fatalities. In reality, it seemed unclear as to whether the time change had caused more accidents in the morning, or reduced them in the afternoon. Likewise, there was no clear evidence that even energy consumption had been reduced. Nevertheless, year-round daylight saving provided no daily happy hour and in fall 1974 Congress turned back the clock on DST’s mid-life crisis: DST was back to a mere split personality: standard time in winter, DST in summer.
Daylight Savings Time’s Golden Years
Having survived a dark time in 1974, DST quietly settled into its senior years as if it had gone off to a retirement home, only springing forward for two annual visits, no not Christmas and Easter, but rather the traditional March and Fall clock change events. By 2020, much of America had grown weary of DST’s disruptive “golden years” visits. States began enacting their own “no time change” laws in anticipation of a national change. However, per the Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution and prior Congressional actions, the federal government needed to act for any functional change to occur anywhere in the United States.
In 2022, the U.S. Senate passed a bill to end twice-a-year time changes. How much does the Senate hate time changes? So much so that the Senate, a group who normally can’t even agree on what time it is, passed the bill unanimously! Under the bill DST would become the new standard time – so rather than killing DST it would be given a new identity and year-round life. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida gave his technical reason for sponsoring the bill when he said, “This ritual of changing time twice a year is stupid.”
The 2022 Senate bill never made it to a vote in the House of Representatives. Yet, there have been periodic conversations since to address the question of “what time is it?” A 2023 House proposal would have eliminated time changes and allowed States to decide whether to adopt all-year standard time or DST. The bill would also commission a two-year study of DST. That bill also was never acted on – and thus, time seems to stand still.
The Reboot: DST Conclusion
Like many topics, the issue of daylight savings time is complicated, or in other words, it is difficult to make good time. Based on my review, and in the absence of clear data showing the DST is beneficial or harmful, I settle on two main parameters regarding the future of DST:
- I agree with Marco Rubio that twice a year time changes are stupid.
- For purposes of uniformity, we should use one time all year round in each of the current time zones (except perhaps for Arizona and Hawaii which are currently exempted).
But then the question becomes, which time: standard or DST? What complicates this question is that daylight is not merely an east-west variable, but rather a north-south one. By way of illustration, daylight on the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice, ranges from 8 hours 47 minutes in Bangor, Maine to 10 hours 32 minutes in Miami and on the longest day 13 hours 45 minutes in Miami to 15 hours 35 minutes in Bangor. That can make standardization along East to West time zones challenging considering both Miami and Bangor lie in the Eastern U.S. time zone. Such daylight variance can make it problematic to select school hours or business hours, especially for businesses which operate in multiple states.
Despite the bad experience we had in the 1974 DST all-year-round experiment, I am going with daylight savings time as the standard. Local schools will need to adapt, and businesses will likely need to adapt around them. There is no perfect answer, but in this instance, I am hoping that time can heal all wounds.