The Senate passed a bill Tuesday that would make daylight saving time permanent across the U.S. beginning in 2023. The so-called Sunshine Protection Act of 2021 was approved by unanimous consent, but would still require House approval and President Biden’s signature to become law.
For those wishing for an end to annual clock shifting, this most recent push in Congress is perhaps better late than never.
You can read H.R.69 – Sunshine Protection Act of 2021 here.
FINALLY SOME GOOD FREAKING NEWSReport
Damn, now my curtains will fade twice as fast with all that extra daylight year-round.Report
I’m old enough I remember 1974. That’s all I’ll say.
well, also, that I’ll just refuse to be the ‘good sport’ who teaches the 8 am classes any more if this passes, driving to work in the dark all winter long is depressingReport
Here’s hoping New Zealand follows your lead. Now there’s something I don’t say often.Report
Pedantic note: The Senate bill passed is not identical to the House bill linked. Several bits were modified to make the bill effective in November 2023. The delay in effective date was done at the request of various transportation and broadcast industries, who already have schedule commitments through the end of calendar year 2022. I assume that includes things like the airlines’ assigned take-off and landing slots at congested airports, done in UTC.Report
Oooh, thank you.
I’m vaguely irritated that we still have one more round of this to deal with but… knowing that it’s just one more will be good.
I mean, assuming it’s not vetoed after having a couple dozen riders attached to it.Report
Pedantic question: Will permanent Daylight Time to be renamed the new Standard Time?
A decades long pet peeve of mine is how many people keep using EST/PST when it should be EDT/PDT most of the year.Report
As I read the statute, yes. “Standard Time” for each of the time zones is redefined to be an hour closer to UTC than it is at present.Report
This isn’t one of the powers grated to the federal government, so the highly principled originalists on SCOTUS will strike it down.Report
Article I, Section 8:
To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
I would argue that this falls under fixing a standard of measures.Report
From 1918, everyone has agreed with you. Dept of Transportation is currently responsible for the time zones (subject to states having certain limited and expressly provided for powers) and NIST at the Dept of Commerce sets the reference time for the US.Report
Based on the superficial arguments I’m seeing, I predict this is one of those things where people saying daylight at 9pm in the summer is awesome is a sentiment covered by dawn in the winter still being closer to 8am.
That is, EDT is made possible by EST — and here’s the important part — not the other way around.
Bonus for 2024… it doesn’t land equally across all the parts of the same timezone.Report
*7am, not 8am.Report
The elegant solution, seems to me, is to split the difference and move things a half hour (and then never move away from that).Report
this is what I’ve been advocating for and no one will listen to me. Spread the pain around! Instead of making early birds drive to work in dark for half the year or make night owls lose that last hour of golf at the end of the day half the year, go halvsies so everyone is a little unhappy but also a little happyReport
A great map about time zones:
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/map-claims-show-people-sleep/story?id=26042978Report
This seems like one of those actions completely driven by social media. Spring Ahead / Fall Back was never a big deal – until recently (last five years or so) when people’s feeds become cluttered w complaints twice a year when the clocks change.
Personally I don’t mind changing the clocks, but if it has to be one or the other – Daylight in the evening is far preferable than dealing w darkness in the morning.Report
I, personally, have hated DST since I was old enough to have it impact my schedule. 1977? 1978?
Zombie walking to church on the Sunday, slowly blinking myself awake in grade school…
I even came up with a bunch of reasons that I hated it: You had to go to bed an hour early. You had to get up an hour early. You had to go to school an hour early.
The only benefit was you got out of school an hour early.
Fall back? Now that was *HEAVEN*. Stay up an extra hour! (Sure, the television channels switched too, but that’s okay.) SLEEP IN AN EXTRA HOUR. Go to school an hour later.
The downside was that last hour of school felt interminable, but that was a small price to pay.
I assure you: There is more than social media behind my hatred of the change.
I am one of the people for whom the hour hits hard. Worse than jet lag.Report
Time changes, be it jet lag or otherwise, were never a problem for me until recently. My last trip forward across multiple time zones was awful (I felt like Al Pacino in _Insomnia_). Coming back was no problem. The time changes only really bothered me when I was working nights and the clocks “fell back” in the fall–your 12-hour mid is now a 13-hour mid!
I don’t care whether we settle on DST or DDT(?)…just pick one and stick to it.Report
I don’t think this is true. There was much research, and much discussion of the research, about the harmful affects of clock changes in the 90s and early 2000s, when it was a hot topic each time we approached the changes.
In Texas, some legislators have been trying to get rid of DST since before I moved here (1999), submitting bills each session.
It’s possible it wasn’t on your radar, and it’s possible social media has moved things along, but this has been a hot topic forever.Report
I’m aware of the research and all that, but never really seemed to rise to the level of hot topic (We need to change this!) until recently. And even now, it’s a very loud chorus for about 2 days after the clocks change – and then completely disappears again until the next cycle. Sort of like clock work …Report
I’d like to welcome you to the 12th annual OT discussion of the time change.*
*at least, that’s about how long I’ve been here.Report
LOL. Yeah, I’m still a newbie.
And yet, not at all surprised that this is an OT tradition…Report
I honestly think that it’s because of several things:
The people who hate it are people who really, really, really hate it.
The people who dislike it will grumble for a few days and then adjust again.
The people who are barely affected by it tend to shrug and not notice. Changing the clocks again, ho-hum.
The people who like it are people who, generally, like it.
The people who love it are people who do not really exist.
In the years before social media, there were just people who grumbled and people who said cheerful stuff like “Hey! It’s nice to mow my lawn when I get home on a Tuesday and free up Saturday a little!”
In the days following, the people who hate it find that there are thousands of people who hate it. And since the people who love love love it do not exist…
Well, we get a bill in Congress and it passes the Senate.Report
You know who loves loves loves the bi-annual clock change, Jaybird?
The smoke alarm and battery industrial complex.
How will we know when to check them now??? Are we really prepared for this unintended consequence???Report
Batteries are bad for the environment.
Hard-wired smoke alarms save lives.Report
Well, it is certainly manageable by me and my household… I work from home and have 90% control over my schedule. No 8.30 meetings this week!
In the end I think it’s one of those things for which the original benefits no longer fit the original usecases… that is, we’re not on war footing with shortages on fuel and blackout reasons to extend daylight into the evening. Nor do we really need daylight to ‘extend shopping hours’ in the internet era… sunset at 8 is as cool as sunset at 9. Sunrise at 5? Sure, no harm, no foul. I’ll refrain from some sort of Matthew Arnold comment about bracing Victorian daybreak and all that…
Daylight time is a solution for no particular modern problem… which is why it’s fitting that Congress set the permanent time for the wrong one.
So in 2024 when people are looking around a pre-dawn darkness at 8+/- and wondering WTF? Then we’ll see some real grumbles.
I could almost see the 1/2 hr compromise… but I’d never be able to get used to calling noon 12.30 😉
I haven’t studied it in detail, but wonder if instead of that we look at adding additional time zone (s) to move sunrise/sunset into better vectors for some parts of the country.Report
The only drawback to the 30 minute compromise is how we synch with other countries.
I always get confused scheduling calls with Mumbai, especially one client who insists on starts 15 minutes before and after the hour.Report
Well being America I just assumed when we did it, so would UTC. That’s what compromise means.Report
Decolonize UTC. Take it away from London. Give it to Algiers or Lagos.
This is a Justice issue.Report
Symbolically we could move it to Ukraine and forever mentally note it’s UTC+2Report
Cursed thought: If a “new variant” forces a majority of people back into wfh, DST vs. Standard won’t really matter any more. No one has a commute, so no one risks being in an accident because it’s barely dawn and that idiot with a gray pickup truck is convinced that turning his headlights off (because HE can see) will save gas.
Kids doing school from home? No kids to get hit by cars waiting for a bus in the eternal darkness of a daylight-saving December morning….Report