Episode 26 - The Great Daylight Savings Time Debate

Evan delves into the fierce debate surrounding the potential permanent establishment of Daylight Savings Time - in other words, removing the annual ritual of “springing forward” or “falling back” on our clocks. He examines the history of Daylight Savings Time, consider the pros and cons of the burgeoning movement to make it permanent, and offers his own perspectives and personal experience on the issue.

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Trump faces Republican rebellion over Daylight Saving Time as Senate bill nears dead end

Daylight saving time year-round: 19 states are ready to ‘lock the clock’ and end time change

The US tried year-round daylight saving time in 1973. Here’s what happened

Daylight Saving Time Should the U.S. Keep Daylight Saving Time? - Encyclopedia Brittanica 

A map of how permanent daylight savings time would affect sunrise and sunset times 

Daylight Savings Time Gripe Assistant Tool - nifty tool to determine if you should or shouldn’t support the change 

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Intro music: Groovy Trip Hop/Marcolaieh/Tribe of Noise

Outro music: You Make Me/VBEBeats/Tribe of Noise 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I don't want to just say, oh, well, you know what, those people, there's not really a lot of people there. We can go ahead with this. It'll be just fine. The greatest good for the greatest number of people, utilitarian ethics, right? Well, I don't want to do that either. And I think there's some other possible proposals that could happen in tandem with keeping or with abolishing the current system that may help to mitigate some of these fears. I am your show host, Evan Buck, and as always, remember that the buck stops right here, because we are looking out for you. Today I'm gonna be delving into a debate that has been ongoing for quite some time, and that is over daylight savings time. Whether we should keep it or whether we should abolish it. Now, this has been a pretty fierce debate. It's been going on for quite some time, and I'm flying solo this episode. Uh just decided it'd be easier to keep things in-house this time. But before we get into the main topic, I'd always like to do a little obligatory put plug for my Discord server. If you'd like to keep up with all things of an extemporaneous, then go down to the show notes, the description, and be able to join our growing little community there. And also, if you enjoy listening to these broadcasts, then, and if you are so inclined to support the show to kinda to help offset some of the costs of running it, then that information is down in the show notes as well. Alright, now with that little bit of housekeeping out of the way, let's get into what this daylight savings time debate is all about. Now, there is an urban legend which basically says that the whole reason we established daylight savings time to begin with was because of helping out farmers with, you know, the timing of harvesting their crops or milking cows in the morning or whatever. Now, I did get a little bit ahead of myself there because I didn't really describe what daylight savings time is for the uninitiated, for those outside of the United States, or even inside the United States. Daylight savings time is basically this concept of either springing forward or falling back. So at some point in the spring, you move the clocks forward an hour, and in the fall, it is, well, you're falling back. You are essentially gaining an hour of time. Now, the reason that we do this is primarily because we want to align the most hours of sunlight with the clocks as we use them. And the thing is, is, and so getting into the whole urban legend with the farmers, uh, from all my research that I've done on the subject, that is an urban legend. Uh, farmers, they kind of get up early before the crack of dawn anyway, as is. And so, yeah, as nearly as I can tell, none of the farmers that I've seen online have basically said that it really helps them out all that much. Uh, Benjamin Franklin actually was probably one of the first to propose this concept of springing forward or falling back in a satirical letter that he wrote in 1784. So, somewhat like uh, you know, Jonathan Swift's modest proposal, I believe. Um wasn't really meant to be taken seriously, but Benjamin Franklin is, of course, a was a brilliant scientific mind for his day, and maybe that was kind of where it started to gain a little bit of steam, a little bit of traction. But it wasn't really formally put into law until World War I, or as it was known then, the Great War. It was initiated as a temporary wartime effort to help save on energy, to help save coal and to help save oil that was used for heating, lighting homes, lighting businesses. But eventually it was repealed nationwide in 1919. However, there were some individual localities, like New York City, that maintained the biannual time change, and so this led to a lot of chaos, as you can imagine. Uh, depending on whatever state or locality you were in, some chose to keep daylight savings time in effect, and other states did not. So you could have a situation where the time could be an hour ahead or an hour behind once you cross into New York City, for example. You know, you're just driving in from upstate New York and then you go to New York City, and now it's a different time. Kind of kinda wild, kind of crazy. Uh, Time magazine famously called this a chaos of clocks, and I could not agree more. This state of affairs persisted until 1966. Took people quite a while to actually get around to making a change on this, when the Uniform Time Act made the twice-yearly time change consistent nationwide. Now, there have been a couple of points in American history where year-round daylight savings time, in other words, not springing forward and falling back, was implemented. The first time was during World War II, and this was from 1942 to 1945, and wouldn't you know it, just like the previous World War, it was mainly instituted to help conserve energy for the war effort. Then we went back to the whole spring forward fallback system until, again, 1973, which was the result of an act of Congress during an energy crisis. Uh, it was mandated emergency daylight savings time from January through October of 1974. Now, it is worth wondering and asking, all right, these seem to be temporary wartime measures. Why did we go back? Because if you if you look at the state of polling, the modern political landscape right now, changing from the current system seems to be wildly popular. Seems like most Americans are very much in favor of getting rid of the spring forward fallback. And we'll we'll get into the reasons why during the course of this podcast. So, of course, that does beg the question: all right, why do we have the system in place still? If it is so uh one of the most universally uh you know unifying political issues, why hasn't something been done yet? Well, one argument that can be made is that historically, when this change has been made, it ended up becoming wildly unpopular. Uh in World War II, by the end of World War II, only 17% of citizens wanted to keep war time, or year-round daylight savings time, for the whole year. Uh, 53% of citizens opposed keeping daylight savings time during the 1970s crisis. So, seems like we've tried it before, and it seems like it actually ended up not being popular and causing more issues when year-round daylight savings time was put in place. And also, I'm just gonna say something here as well. I kind of tend to get a little confused when I refer to the change as year-round daylight savings time, personally. I just like to think of it as not springing forward or falling back, keeping the same time all year round. So that's probably what I'm gonna be referring to it as from now on, because this whole, you know, permanent daylight savings time, no daylight savings time, as some of the of the ongoing debate, you know, tends to call it, uh, it's just a little bit confusing for my poor brain to handle. So I'm just gonna say, are you for keeping the current system or are you for getting rid of the time change every spring and every fall? Um, one of the biggest objections, and one of the biggest reasons why this change was so unpopular, was because in some parts of the country, when you kept daylight savings time, when you didn't make that change, sunrise wouldn't occur until 9 o'clock in the morning or after 9 o'clock. And so many parents were incredibly concerned about uh their children having to wait for the bus or walk to school in pitch black darkness. I do think that's a very valid objection, honestly. And we'll be getting into the pros and cons of this move and the whole debate raging over this in a few minutes. But before we get into that, the question remains why is it now becoming such a big issue? And why is there such fierce debate over it? Well, the uh US Congress actually did something finally for once that might be beneficial for the American people, even more of a shocker. First, they did something. Secondly, it might be good for the country. Um, but they actually, in a fairly bipartisan measure, um they passed a bill recently to uh institute a change that would stop us from having to shift our clocks every year. Now, that seems to be pretty good news uh from my point of view. We'll begin to why I think that in a few minutes. And President Trump has signaled that he would like to make this change. So what's the problem? Well, the problem is that the Senate seems to be a little bit more leery of this change. There are some senators, it seems to be not so much a left versus right Republican versus Democrat issue as it is a regional issue. And I think given the nature of the proposed change, it makes sense. Because northern states are probably gonna have to be dealing with more just based on the curvature of the earth, based on time zones, they're gonna have to be dealing with these later possible sunrises than a lot more of the southern states would. I will say, one of my biggest reasons for backing a change like this, no, I say a change like this, because I'm not necessarily throwing my hat in the ring in support of full-on permanent daylight savings time. But one of the biggest reasons I utterly despise the current system is because of I want more sunlight at the end of the day during the darkest times of the year, and that's winter. And at some points during the winter, it is pitch black at 4:30. I I think that's inexcusable. I think that's utterly abhorrent. And a lot of the time in the winter it gets dark like right at 5. And yeah, I I really dislike that. I think it's better to have more light in the evening hours than it is in the morning hours. That's just me personally. I am somewhat biased because I am I tend to be more of a night person. But anyway, I again I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself. You can probably tell I'm pretty excited to talk about this and the pros and cons of this because I feel quite strongly about not doing springing forward and falling back. I just think it's a really dumb system. But be that as it may, the bill that was passed in the House of Representatives is probably going to end up getting gridlocked in the Senate until and unless maybe some sort of compromise is reached or enough uh people on both sides end up deciding to throw their support behind it. So, we see the current state of where this proposal is at right now, why it's kind of becoming elevated in the forefront of the public consciousness right now, and now I think is as good a time as any to start getting into some of the pros and the cons of this change. So let's let's kind of start with the bad news first. Let's start with some of the cons. Why would we decide to keep the current system? Well, I already gave a big reason for that, and that is that a lot of states would have incredibly late sunrises. And for kids going to school, people driving to work early in the morning, it can be it could be admittedly a pretty bad proposal. Now, I will say certain states, for example, like Alaska, they already have absolutely wacky, insane, you know, summers and winters, sunrises and sunsets. You know, in the summer, I think they have like all day at one point, all day sunshine, and in the winter there are some days where they get absolutely no sun at all. So I don't think we should be using them as an argument for or against the proposal, because even under the current system, as things already exist, they already have, you know, crazy days and nights and they're used to it. I do think, however, that in certain parts of North Dakota, you're not going to have the sun rise until 9.30. Admittedly, I'll say, not not a great change. Not a great argument. Another argument against the proposal to stop or to continue, or I think I mixed myself up a little bit there. Another argument for keeping the current system is that the time zones as they exist, and especially with a state like Arizona that currently does not observe daylight savings time, they the Navajo nation in Arizona, the Indian tribes, they recognize daylight savings time, but Arizona doesn't. And so if you make all of the states basically, you know, go with a new regime, a new system, but the, you know, the many sovereign Indian tribes decide to go against it, or decide to keep, you know, well, whatever they want to do, it could be a different system altogether. You're basically going to have a much more patchwork, almost somewhat reminiscent of the clock chaos that Time magazine spoke of. Um, you know, you could drive by a s through a certain state, and it's all in the same time zone, or mostly in the same time zone, but the instant you get into different federally recognized tribal territory, you're gonna have a completely different time. Now, that may not matter for the majority of people, but we'll just take the example of uh Tulsa, Oklahoma, for example, and a lot of the eastern part of the state of Oklahoma is mostly in federally recognized tribal land. There are going to be some areas which will be, I would say, heavily affected by this sort of change. Another argument in favor of doing the time changes is, according to research, interestingly enough, uh, crime actually declines after the spring time change. And keeping, you know, getting more daylight hours in the spring and the summer, again, with specifically the clock change, helps with overall community safety. This is a very interesting point and a very interesting argument. And I think it's one that is pretty compelling. However, I will say that if we think that having more daylight in the later evening times is beneficial for crime rates, beneficial for safety, you know, driving, all of that, why not keep that year round? Personally. That's kind of my argument. And the final argument for the time change or for keeping the current system that I can think of at the moment, is that having more daylight in the warmer months helps promote active, healthier lifestyles on the whole, and you're already keeping people safer in their homes during the winter time. They shouldn't be out driving anyway, so you know, on icy roads and whatever. And so keeping them indoors more with and incentivizing them to do so with the darkness as a contributing factor, well, that also helps, you know, promote overall health and wellness of the community. Now, those are some interesting arguments, and I would say there are some there definitely are some benefits to having the springing forward and falling back, but I'm probably gonna go on a bender now on how much I hate the current system and why we need in capital letters and EED, we need to get rid of it. One of the single biggest arguments is that really, in actuality, the time change itself is horrific for your health. So later daylight hours, because of the change, yeah, they can be better for for health of individuals, but the actual ritual of springing forward or falling back is terrible for overall health. There is a UNC health report that says that the risk of heart attack increases by about 24% on the Monday following the spring time change. And I'm sure that you have experienced this. I experience this a lot when we spring forward and fall back, but it just causes chaos. You know, for example, everybody shows up to church or work an hour late, an hour early, we're all grouchy when we lose an hour of sleep, and you know, we get a little maybe groggier when we are getting an extra hour of sleep. And so with the time change, it's so irritating, it's so annoying to deal with. And for, you know, the next day or two after the day change, maybe even up to a week after the day change, it just wreaks havoc on people's schedules because everybody's an hour ahead or an hour behind and forget to do the time change. Yeah, the Monday after the time change is just really bad at work. Everybody's super unproductive. And I think this is one of the single greatest reasons to be in favor of stopping this time change every year, and it's why it's so popular at this current stage in time. Is it's just super irritating to have to keep doing this every half of the year. There's also some interesting research that shows that suicide rates actually increased in Australia compared to the weeks after you return to standard time in the fall, which I think is is a quite interesting study. And car accident rates are also um, you know, noticeably higher after the time change occurs. So that's probably one of the biggest reasons that I despise the time change, and I think that we should go in favor of a different policy. Another reason why we should be against the time changes, in my view, is that DST, or the rather the springing forward and falling back, is quite economically expensive. There are some economists that have argued that just by having to change the clock every year, this costs Americans $1.7 billion in lost time, lost productivity, all of it when you adjust and shift to the time changes. The airline industry, for example, it costs them almost $150 million because consumers are confused with their time schedules, and with, you know, maybe flying internationally, countries that don't participate in the time change are now on an entirely different schedule. And you know, all of those supposedly pro energy saving reasons for getting for keeping this system? Well, according to the New York Post, the time change actually comes at an environmental cost. There are more uh there is more energy that is being consumed with increased pollution, increased uh uh electric bills, and increased energy usage with the time change. And I mean it's kind of intuitive, it kind of makes sense, especially in the winter, you're probably gonna be more inclined to, you know, crank on the heat because it's starting to get dark outside sooner and cooler outside sooner. So, and then just kind of some personal reasons for myself. This is kind of a funny story, but when I was a kid, I was acutely aware of daylight savings, having the extra hour and sunlight during the summer. I loved it. I was able to go outside and play outside for way longer than I would in the winter. I dreaded the time frame. Change in the winter. And I would kind of mark it on my calendar as okay, playtime's over. Like I'm not really going to be able to do what I want to do as much anymore. I have way less light to do it. Sometimes the change would even fall on my birthday. So that is that is kind of interesting. So those are some of the pros and the cons. And I do think it's worth noting some of the major arguments for keeping the current system again. And one of the central arguments that proponents of the status quo, the current system, say is hey, we tried it in the in the 40s with World War II, we tried uh, you know, keeping in the 1970s, we tried having this whole permanent system with no time change, and everybody hated it. We couldn't we could barely go a year before we went reverted back to the old system. Again, note that I said at the beginning of this, towards the beginning of this discussion, that I do think that's a really compelling argument, a really compelling point. And, you know, children walking to school in safety or driving to or people driving to work in pitch black darkness. Yeah, that's not really necessarily ideal at all. So this is my formal response to that argument. First of all, I would still rather have more sunlight at the end of the day in the winter versus at the beginning of the day. And if you want to talk about safety, let's talk about safety for people who are driving from work, who are tired, who are exhausted from the start of the from working all from the start of the day to the end of the day. Well, now you're making them drive in pitch black darkness at the end of the day. And statistics back up this point that there are in fact more car accidents when the time change happens in winter. So there's always gonna be edge cases that are significantly hurt or significantly benefited by a time change. I will note that most of the super late um sunrises. There's a map actually that I'm I'm gonna link in the show notes that will go to show how just how late the sunrises could get if permanent daylight savings time was applied. I'll readily admit, some areas are pretty darn tootin' late. Most of them happen to be away from extremely high density population centers, as far as I could see. But I don't want to just say, oh, well, you know what, those people, there's not really a lot of people there. We can go ahead with this. It'll be just fine. The greatest good for the greatest number of people. Utilitarian ethics, right? Well, I don't want to do that either. And I think there's uh some other possible proposals that could happen in tandem with keeping or with abolishing the current system that may help to mitigate some of these fears. For example, I think it would be a really good idea to not force children to go to school at seven in the morning, forcing them to get up incredibly early to get to school. For starters, uh, kids physiologically, this is the point in time where they need the most amount of sleep humanly possible. And so, why should we be making them go to school in the dark to begin with, no matter what happens with the time change? I personally feel we should be we should have a different school schedule that would permit kids to get to school at least by the time the sun rises, wherever whatever happens with this new time change. But I think making them go to school at 7 a.m., no matter what, really there's just there are quite a few studies and a lot of arguments that are basically saying, look, kids everywhere in this country are incredibly sleep deprived, and a big part of that whole problem is because of their school schedules. So, yeah, I think it's good to teach children responsibility, obviously, and you know, you have to get up early to get to work in a lot of industries, but especially at that formative time of their life when their developing brains just need more sleep, there's another capital need. Yeah, I just don't understand why we're making them go to bed to school at 7 a.m. I think it's crazy. But I also think that there is another way that we could go about this that could help mitigate some of these fears. Now, this is an idea that has been floated for some time, and I'll give credit where credit is due. I first heard about it from my mom, actually. Uh she floated this to me, and I did some research, and it turns out there are some proponents of this move, but she'll get credit in terms of my hearing at first, and she has been silently advocating this for quite some time. And that is let's compromise. Let us make a compromise between standard time and savings time. We split the difference. As soon as we pass a proposal to keep to not do the time changes anymore, we're only gonna roll back or spring forward 30 minutes. So let's say we pass this, you know, during the spring and summer months. Well, let's roll back 30 minutes this November, and that's it. No more changing the clock, no more of this garbage, just fall back 30 minutes. Now, if we happen to do this during policy proposal during the winter months, then let's just have it spring forward for 30 minutes and then keep the clocks the same. Do not change it again. This would help mitigate some of the concerns. For example, in areas of the country which would see a sunrise at 9 o'clock or later, well, you would be seeing it more around 8:30. Again, pretty late, but it's significantly better than 9 a.m., I would say. I just think the disadvantages of continually changing the clock are so much greater than not. It ruins sleep schedules, it ruins your natural body's circadian rhythms, and like I've ranted about, it gives us pitch black darkness at 4.30 in the winter. So, me personally, I am very much in favor of this move. I feel like, really, all of the there are always going to be pros and cons to any proposed change. But really, in the end, I just see from what I've examined, what I've studied, and how I personally feel, I think that some sort of change, whether it's just keeping the time changes from happening to begin with, or having a proposed combo of no more time changes and splitting the difference to 30 minutes, I I think it would just make us a lot better off. I think also another change that we could possibly consider isn't it a little bit overdue for us to adjust our time zone boundaries? I think that, especially when you look at the map of sunlight hours and when the sunrises happen, to me, and this is a complaint that I've seen raised by others as well, our time zone boundaries as they are in America should be adjusted. And that I think could also be something that could be picked up once this change happens, and we could start seeing, you know, when the sunlight or when the sun rises and when it sets, and make adjustments to the time zones themselves. I think that would be very beneficial. We have some very crazy off uh you know, off cases like China, for example, which because of the Chinese Communist Party, they decided that China all needs to be in one massive giant time zone. And yeah, it's incredibly wacky what goes on over there with because China is definitely, most assuredly, not all in one time zone. It was one of the biggest countries in the world. And so, but I bring them up because while we're not on the same level as China, um, I would say that the the time zone should probably be redone. So, those are some interesting proposals that I think we can also can contemplate in tandem with no longer doing this time change nonsense. There is one more main thing that I want to bring up, and that is that some enterprising people have created an online tool, and I think it's a it's a very aptly named tool. It's called the Daylight Savings Time Gripe Assistant Tool. And I like this quite a bit because, like I've said and like I've recognized before, there are going to be people who are always gonna be for it or always gonna be against it, and it very heavily depends on where you live. And I'm also throwing this into the show notes. So, but according to this tool, you can measure like how much daylight savings time is, you know, either great for you or not that great for you. And you can and so what you can do this, and it's color-coded as well. It says, hey, in order to satisfy your preferences for sunrises and sunsets, you should we either be in favor of abolishing daylight savings time or always using daylight savings time. Now, for purpose of my testing this map, I am going to say, because it can you can basically punch and you can say, hey, what's the latest reasonable sunrise time? And what's the earliest reasonable sunset time? Now, the default is latest reasonable sunrise is 7 o'clock in the morning. Earliest reasonable sunset time is 6 o'clock p.m. And you can see that there's vast swaths of the country that would say we should get rid of daylight savings time. There are gonna be tiny narrow bands that say we should make no change to the current system, and there's gonna be some other narrow bands that say we should always use daylight savings time. Now, I'm going to say that I'm gonna tweak it a little bit. I'm gonna say the latest reasonable sunrise time is 7.30 in the morning. And the earliest reasonable sunset time, I'm gonna say 6.30 in the at night. And if we make that change, you can see there now most of the country is in favor of always using daylight savings time. And I think that makes sense, because you're gonna be getting more daylight hours throughout the rest of the year. Always. That's just that's just how it's gonna be if we abolish the current system. And really what I see from this map is just depending on where you live, you are going to be more pre-inclined, predisposed to being in favor of the change or being against the change. And I recognize that. And I think that's one of the main takeaways overall from this episode is you're not gonna really be able to necessarily please everybody, but I do think that a lot of the research bears out that the just the time change itself is pretty bad for a lot of people, and a lot of people's overall health and well-being, and you know, the economic costs, the confusion, you know. I I think there is a reason why getting rid of the of the current system is so overwhelmingly supported. We all, and I say we all, meaning most all of us, are just sick and tired of this change. Sick and tired of the constantly springing forward and falling back. And so any change that helps us get a little closer to some sort of time sanity, well, we'll figure it out, we'll make tweaks as we go along, because there are reasons why the current system exists, but I think that in the end, the government is doing a good job by contemplating changes that would, in my view, ultimately help more people. So, that is about all that I have to say for this episode of Evan Extemporaneous. It's a little bit of a shorter one, but I figured, you know what? We're talking about time, we're talking about the changing of the times, so I might as well keep the time that you guys are hearing me out a little bit on the shorter side. Just to kind of help spur discussion and keep this a little bit more concise, a little bit more hopefully leaning towards the side of brevity. So, hope you all enjoyed this episode, and I would love to hear from all of you guys. Please sound off in the comments or on the Discord channel and let me know what you think. I do recognize that this episode was almost exclusively majority American focused. Um, there are a lot of countries around the world that have different systems, and you know, I to my shame, I will say, I didn't really even think about necessarily doing that research. I did happen to stumble across in one of the articles that I uh am gonna link in the show notes, that the province of British Columbia in uh Canada apparently passed a bill or adopted permanent daylight savings time that was and this move was supported by 90% of the population there. Um so they stopped doing the time changes over there. I'm doing a quick just like a quick look on this as well. And it seems that uh 173 countries in the world out of 193, you know, legally recognized UN entities, 173. They do not participate in this time change. But a lot of the, you know, major world players and world affairs like the United States, some some of them do adopt this standard, and they have a patchwork uh setting of observance in Australia, in Canada, in France, uh in Chile, and of course, the amazingly huge just economic power house that is Greenland. Um I am being rather tongue-in-cheek there. But I do think that is pretty interesting to note. 173 countries, that is that is the vast majority of the world, already don't do this insane jumping back and forth system. Now, maybe there are some instances, in fact, there are plenty of instances, where following the crowd is not always necessarily the right move. Um you know, the bandwagon theory, the bandwagon fallacy is definitely a thing. But I think with everything that I've researched and looked into, um I think that there is more than enough in the body of evidence that shows me that the current system is untenable and we need to make a change. Thank you so much everyone for tuning in. Please let me know your thoughts. And as always, remember that the buck stops right here because we are looking out for you.