Posted on 03/23/2015 7:18:00 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
It’s been taking place for nearly as long as I’ve been alive and I’m having a hard time recalling a single conversation with anyone who was an enthusiastic fan. The subject is daylight saving time, which crops up twice every year in nearly the entire nation, and is then promptly forgotten again once everyone gets their internal clocks mostly readjusted. But perhaps this is finally coming to an end as ten states debate dropping the practice, picking a time and sticking to it.
States across the country are taking a dim view toward daylight saving time. And some say it’s time to turn back the clock — so to speak.
Lawmakers in 10 states have proposed legislation challenging what, for many, is a twice-a-year headache, and one they just endured again earlier this month. The new bills would mostly have states pick a time … and stay on that time…
Elected officials in 10 states have proposed legislation that would opt their states out of daylight saving time including Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, Utah and Washington.
The officials all cite different reasons from health to safety concerns. Some just consider the practice pointless and antiquated.
The “benefits” of daylight saving time are fairly dubious at best. It’s a trick we play on ourselves so that it will seem like there are more hours of sunshine after you get out of work or school for most of the year. In the winter the clocks are changed so the sun “comes up earlier” as you start your day. Of course, none of this changes the actual number of hours of sunlight or darkness… it just shifts the hours when most people are awake and working or playing.
Some of the arguments against doing this seem a bit overblown as well. Perhaps there are some studies which show that accidents increase when people’s sleep patterns are disrupted, but mostly it seems as if people just find it to be a big pain in the backside. I know that it hit me harder than usual this year and seems to be doing so increasingly as I age. (Yes, you may now get off my lawn.)
One of the biggest arguments in favor of sticking with this scheme is that changing back to a single standard would “create confusion” in commerce and transportation.
[Michael] Downing, though, says keeping track of a standard clock nationwide could become extremely difficult if each state starts adjusting its own time.
“Once individual states start to change their clocks in innovative ways, it’s no longer predictable to transportation, communication and broadcasters,” Downing said. “There starts to be real costs that start to accrue as a result.”
I agree that complications will increase if only a handful of states drop daylight saving time, but that gives the false impression that we don’t already have some confusion in the system as it is. Arizona never adopted the practice (aside from some of the Native American reservation lands) and yet people seem to travel there and do business. And the fact that we have multiple time zones in the country already provides for more than enough confusion. Florida, Indiana, Michigan, Kentucky, and Tennessee are all broken up into sections which are in the eastern and central time zones. You can literally travel from one place to another without crossing a state line and have the clock change on you. But, again, we somehow manage to get business done without the world ending. People on the east coast know they have to wait a few hours in the morning before they can call a business in California and find anyone in the office. It’s a big country and we adjust to things like this.
This doesn’t need to be a federal issue. If the residents of some of the states want to stay with daylight savings, let them. But personally I’d rather just pick a time scheme and stick with it.
I commend the legislators whove chosen to exercise common sense in this matter!!
Come On In!!!
The hours are just fine.
Year round standard time would be fine.
Year round DST means the sun comes up around 9 AM in Dec-Jan.
If we all have our own truths, why can’t we have our own time? My 6:00 am might be good for me but not good for you.
We don’t have DST here in Arizona ... which is nice as we don’t have clocks that are an hour off half the year. However, we still have to do the DST calculation when dealing with states that do. Example: Calif is an hour earlier half the year.
I;m still struggling with my circadian rhythms!
losing that hour of light in the morning is just not sensible
Tennessee should be on the list, but I suppose it is too much to hope.
Arizona never adopted Daylight Savings Time for one reason: it would have resulted in the Sun setting at later hours in summer, which would put too much stress on the electricity grid in regards to electricity usage from air conditioners in the late afternoon hours. The Indian reservations in Arizona could do it because of the relatively few people living on these reservations.
for several YEARS I have been thinking about....”writing” a short concise Ballot Intuitive to end daylight savings time In California
something on the order of:
“California shall recognize Standard Time “
Who really has clocks off an hour half the year?
I’m all for keeping the same time year round, but especially up North I think it’s important to keep the clocks ahead, rather than set back: the early evening light is just too important on short winter days.
(And the kiddos shouldn’t be shipped off to school so early anyway.)
Though for business people this would create a confusing hodgepodge of “what time is it there?” questions.
Personally I like the additional hour of daylight after work. But increasingly society seems to sit inside and twitter on their devices, paying no mind to the sun.
“Time” is an artificial concept anyway, and shifting the clocks twice a year is just a fraud perpetuated by an outdated concept that should have been abandoned with the greater mechanization of industry.
There was a time when day-job employees wanted to get home with their families while it was still light during the summer months, and enjoy that time in the sunlight. But the advent of other time-shifting strategies has largely made this a moot point, and the rationale no longer exists.
It makes a great deal more sense to set staggered start and end times for various employees at the same work place. Even telecommuting jobs have added to this more flexible time management.
The nation tried year-round DST back during the Jimmy Carter years. Like the metric system, it never really took off.
Actually, New Mexico’s consideration was to stay on Mountain Daylight Time year-round, and not revert to Standard Time in the fall. The measure failed.
Year round DST in those days was supposed to help save energy. Not sure if it really saved energy though. Maybe that’s why that experiment was abandoned? I don’t recall.
Dealing with a time change twice a year is no big deal, but folks still kvetch about it for a few days every spring and every fall.
That's a novel and effective argument to refute moral relativism you have come up with there! Good job!!!
I’m in Central IL, which is the far eastern side of the Central time zone. I would hate doing away with DLST. It would get dark at 8:00 in the middle of June. We never go inside. Friends in IN, who are on the far western side of the Eastern time zone hate that it gets dark at 10:00.
Time zones are very wide, what is ideal for the east end of the zone is not ideal for the west.
kids need to be outside playing, heck, I do too. Don’t move our sunlight hours to the morning when we are asleep/at work, lets keep them in the evening so we can all enjoy the great outdoors!
dissenting vote!
Now that I have animals/land/etc, that extra hour of daylight in the evening is veeeey useful.
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