Twice each year, we spring forward and fall back, changing our clocks in an endless cycle of insanity. Everyone pretty much agrees, it’s awful, and “time change” needs to end. What we can’t seem to agree on is which time to leave it.
I am firmly in the camp of Standard Time. Sure, it’s nice to have daylight hours in the summer evenings, but at what cost? One non-profit, nonpartisan group has come together to answer that question.
SaveStandardTime.org, a group comprised of doctors, sleep experts, scientists and astronomers, argues that permanent Standard Time, the natural time defined by the sun, is the healthiest time to follow. Shifting to Daylight Saving Time (DST) affects our health in adverse ways, including causing us to lose an average of 19 minutes of sleep each night and disrupting our circadian rhythms. Save Standard Time asserts, “Healthful sleep is necessary for prosperity and longevity, and it’s biologically regulated by melatonin and cortisol.
The body’s natural release of these sleeping and waking hormones is tuned to the setting and rising of the sun.”
The truth is our bodies were meant to rise with the sun. One of the harms that experts say will happen if we go to year-round DST is that people will rise in the dark during winter hours when the day is short and be making their morning commute in the dark. Children will be waiting at bus stops in the dark, and the risk of accidents increases.
For the “extra hour” of daylight in the summer, we would be miserable during the winter mornings. And don’t we realize that there’s not actually an extra hour?
Summertime naturally has up to 14.5 hours of daylight at its longest, while winter has 10.5 hours of daylight at its shortest. Whether a day is from 7 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., or 6 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., the length remains the same.
Clearly we have not learned from history, either. The U.S. tried permanent DST in 1974. Seventy-nine percent of the population was in favor of the program at the beginning, but after only one dreadful winter, the support dropped to 42%. School officials urged lawmakers to reconsider after the expected energy savings ended up being false, the schedule disrupted family time for student and several deaths were directly attributed to DST due to children going to school in darkness. The two-year program was ended a year and a half early. Many other countries have also tried permanent DST and have likewise canceled their programs.
The federal legislature currently gives a remedy for time change. Any state can adopt permanent Standard Time by passing legislation. Arizona, Hawaii and all U.S. territories have gone back to permanent Standard Time without any difficulty. If Texas wishes to end “time change,” we can easily pass a bill to do so. However, that is not what Texas did in the last legislative session. Instead, the Texas House passed legislation to make DST permanent, which cannot happen without the approval of Congress. Legislation to make DST permanent at the federal level has been proposed several times but has not passed.
The permanent DST law that the House passed could not go into effect unless and until the US Legislature acts, and there is no guarantee that it will. Had the full legislature passed permanent Standard Time instead, it would have taken effect either on September 1 as most bills do, or they could have chosen to have it take effect after the regular November “fall back.”
I propose that our representatives pass a law to make Standard Time permanent once again. It is better for public health, public safety and is the most biologically normal time for us to be in. And we don’t need any permission from the feds to do so.