On Tuesday, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would make daylight saving time permanent. The bill is called Sun protection lawand it is sponsored by two republicans, Brett Guthrie and Gus Bilirakis.
It appears to stem from something President Trump promised shortly after being elected for the second time.
The Republican Party will do everything it can to eliminate daylight saving time, which has a small but strong constituency, but it shouldn’t! Daylight saving time is inconvenient and very costly for our nation.
– Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 13, 2024
But this bill would not eliminate daylight saving time. I would assure you, although Trump seems to have revised his position and Become a pro-permanent daylight saving time guy more recently..
Either way, passage of the bill would put an end to this abomination:
Summer time was perhaps originally conceived by a New Zealand entomologist named George Hudson, who realized that on the longest days of summer, he was wasting two precious hours of time collecting insects because it was in the morning. He felt that the overtime should simply be transferred to the evening so he could prance in the meadows after dinner, instead of, you know, waking up earlier. For non-entomologists, the time could be used “for playing cricket, gardening, cycling or any other outdoor activity they desire,” he said.
Daylight saving time was later enacted in the United States, not for cavorting, but, of course, for wartime productivity. So the time change is a holdover from the First World War.
Finally eliminating from American life the most annoying annoyance in the universe (the twice-a-year clock that everyone hates) would, on the whole, be beneficial. Unfortunately, switching to permanent daylight saving time instead of permanent standard time is foolish and childish.
It sets 1:00 pm instead of 12:00 pm as solar noon, the point at which the sun is theoretically directly overhead. And the American Academy of Sleep Medicine says“permanent daylight saving time would delay exposure to morning light, making it difficult for children and teens to wake up, learn, and travel safely to school during dark winter mornings.”
Blocking it does what daylight saving time does in summer, but all year round: it steals daylight from the morning and gives it to the night. In fact, the result would be eerie and abnormally late sunrises in the middle of winter.
In, say, Chicago, where the last winter sunrise of the year is currently around 7:18 amthe sun would rise no later than 8:18 am, which is terrible. And the benefit of transferring all that morning light would be a winter sunset at 5:31 pm instead of 4:31 pm The thing about winter days is that they are awfully short and you can’t collect bugs after dinner in winter, no matter what you do with your watch.
But if the Senate passes this bill, we’ll be stuck with that forever. Oh ok. It’s less stupid than the system we have now.
In fact, the Senate passed a version of the Sun Protection Law. in 2022but it failed in the House. This time, the bill has clearer opponents, like Tom Cotton, who hates permanent daylight saving time. He gave a speech about this last yearsaying in part:
“If permanent daylight saving time becomes the law of the land, it will once again make winter a dark and depressing time for millions of Americans.
By turning the clocks back one hour in winter, permanent daylight saving time would delay winter sunrises to an absurdly late hour, depriving Americans of the morning sun that is essential to our safety and well-being.”
All of which is true, but it’s better than changing our clocks.
