Yesterday (December 13), President-elect Donald J. Trump touched on a relatively quiet controversy that still flares up twice a year. He proposes to eliminate the concept Daylight Saving Time, or Summer Time as other countries call it. The one thing everyone responding to him agrees upon is that semiannual time changes are inconvenient and even unhealthy. Shifting the clock ahead one hour is worse than shifting it back, because one loses an hour of sleep. But people still argue about one thing: what should actually be the permanent clock setting after time changes stop? Herewith a brief review of the history of time changes, solutions other countries have found, and CNAV’s own proposed solution.
Definitions of time zones and other time conventions
The Uniform Time Act of 1966 first established the concept Daylight Saving Time. Before then, the Time Zone Act of 1918 defined the eight North American time zones we know today. This table shows the original time zones, and how many degrees west of the Prime or Greenwich Meridian the centers of these zones would be:
Longitude, degrees (West) | Civilian name | Military letter |
60 | Atlantic | Q |
75 | Eastern | R |
90 | Central | S |
105 | Mountain | T |
120 | Pacific | U |
135 | Yukon | V |
150 | Alaskan or Hawaiian | W |
165 | Bering | X |
Yukon Time is obsolete today, so international law currently names it Alaskan Time, which falls between Pacific and Hawaiian. Bering Time is now Samoa Time in American parlance.
180 degrees is, of course, the International Date Line, which also divides “Anywhere-on-earth” or Baker Island Time (Military: Y) from Line Islands Time (Military: M). For reference, the military uses Z for Coordinated Universal Time (formerly Greenwich Mean Time, now “just another time zone”). J stands for the time observed locally aboard ship or on station at any given location. The letters A through M (except J) refer to time zones moving east of the Prime Meridian (at 15-degree intervals), and N through Y refer to zones moving west of the Prime Meridian.
The Interstate Commerce Commission draws time-zone boundaries in the United States. Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands use Atlantic Time.
Introducing the time changes
In 1966, Congress passed its Uniform Time Act to accommodate city dwellers who wanted an extra hour of daylight in the evenings in summer, but did not want to sacrifice an hour of daylight in the winter. This literally left farmers out in the cold. A farmer keeps local sunlight time; sunlight and weather rigidly dictate his work schedule. So what if the sun rises at four-thirty in the morning? He’s up when the dew dries off his fields, and he doesn’t care when he gets up. All he cares about is: what work does he have to do, and how soon can he start it?
Not so the city dweller. A factory owner typically determines his work schedule. Sunrise at 4:30 a.m. is wasted on him – perhaps worse than wasted, because the light wakes him up. What he would like to have, is an extra hour of darkness in the morning, and that extra hour transferred to his “after hours.”
That, at least, is how Congress sold the concept Daylight Saving Time (DST) to the American people. Thereafter, on a designated spring (or late winter) Sunday morning, 2:00 a.m. becomes 3:00 a.m. That’s the start of DST – or Summer Time in other countries who also observe the custom. Then on a designated fall Sunday morning, 3:00 a.m. becomes 2:00 a.m. and retraces that hour. This leads to the proverb, “Spring Forward; Fall Back.”
The people hate it!
Members of any generation later than Baby Boomers will not remember an era when time changes did not happen. But in fact, adults of The Greatest Generation (before the Baby Boom), once time changes started, grew to hate them. “Robbing Peter to pay Paul!” cried many – and that was the charitable or “gentlemanly” way to put it. Even the city dwellers – especially the “night owls” – who loved the extra hour of daylight, hated losing an hour’s rest. Typically that lasted one day – but its effects might linger for a week, or longer. As they still do.
Farmers were outraged. They bellowed,
We can’t start work until the dew dries off our fields – and you’ve just robbed us of an hour of daylight in the morning!
They did more than bellow – they wrote to their State legislators. That’s why several States – typically farm States – passed laws nullifying the time changes.
But apart from two States, none of these laws remain in effect. Arizona nullifies all time changes to this day. Arizonans keep Mountain Standard Time year-round – though Navajo reservation dwellers change their clocks, just like everybody else. Hawaii also nullified DST – and, being tropical and out of any telecommunications networks, they lose nothing by so doing. The Uniform Time Act permits nullifying DST but does not permit nullifying Standard Time.
The Trump proposal
Donald Trump, after his reelection, proposed ending all time changes. But he expressed it like this:
The Republican Party will use its best efforts to eliminate Daylight Saving Time, which has a small but strong constituency, but shouldn’t! Daylight Saving Time is inconvenient, and very costly to our Nation.
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/113647254141876924
Truth Social lets visitors see replies to a Truth in timestamp order (oldest or newest first), or in order of decreasing trending or controversy. Trending replies are now totally off the subject; they talk about how much people like to have Trump back. But the oldest replies show people mostly agreeing that it’s time to eliminate time changes. Where people disagree is on whether to observe DST or standard time year-round.
In fact measures to nullify time changes by keeping year-round DST are pending in many States. Most such laws would take effect only if Congress repeals the Uniform Time Act, as amended. Almanac.com produced this survey of the current state of time change law on October 24.
In March of 2022 the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a measure to observe DST year-round throughout the country. Despite bipartisan sponsorship by Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), that measure got nowhere in the House. It died after Midterms.
According to Reuters, twelve Senators of both parties made the same pitch last March.
Why the time changes should stop
Again, adults who remembered How It Was Before the Time Changes, hate them. “Falling back” is bad enough, but “springing forward” is worse. The change itself, not the state changed to, is the problem.
Jim Hoft at The Gateway Pundit wrote a comprehensive survey of the costs and (dubious) benefits of the time changes. DST is supposed to save fuel (for lighting, headlights, etc.), but those benefits are minimal to undetectable. A University of Michigan study says the days following time changes (either way) see more heart attacks and workplace injuries. The New York Times reports that such incidents cost the economy $434 million a year.
So a consensus has developed: set the clocks either forward or back just once, and then leave them alone! The only remaining question is: in which direction? One other question might be: how far forward? Some countries (Iran, for example) keep time offset half an hour from the expected longitude-dependent adjustment.
In the fall and winter of 1973-1974, the United States tried observing DST all year round. That was a disaster. The Washingtonian reports what happened. Sunrise at 8:27 a.m. on a school morning! Children bicycling to school or waiting for buses in the dark! One saw the tragic results of this absurdity in traffic accident reports and hospital emergency rooms. Some school districts delayed school until after sunrise as a result – but that also meant delaying dismissal.
So when do we change the time to?
When even the city dwellers cried out in anguish – and President Nixon saw his prestige collapse and even had to resign – Congress repealed year-round DST before it could take effect for another fall and winter. Since then, Congress has delayed the “fall back” and advanced the “spring forward,” but has little appetite for permanent DST. But that hasn’t stopped several States from proposing permanent DST. (To repeat, Arizona and Hawaii observe permanent standard time.)
Permanent DST, as mentioned, is a non-starter for farmers. It is also a non-starter in Hawaii, because sunrise and sunset vary much less than in other States.
What would happen if the country kept standard time year-round? For the wintertime, standard time is ideal. Holiday activities typically are more enjoyable after sunset. Anyone who has created a lighted holiday display for his house, knows the benefit. For that matter, anyone who has attended a theme park during Christmas knows how breathtaking such a park can be – when night has fallen. Rob such a place of an hour of the darkness that provides contrast for light displays? Never!
But what about the summertime? Again, farm families would love having people leave them alone. They’ll get up with the sun, and would welcome the hour’s start. The rest of us might try spending an hour of family play time in the morning. The theme parks could adapt readily to an hour of summer darkness by shifting their entertainments from rides and games to indoor shows.
Just one more thing
One other solution exists to eliminate time changes and compromise between morning and evening light and darkness. But it would require a complete renegotiation of international time conventions.
Suppose all time zones advanced their clocks a half-hour ahead, so that the “noonday sun” shown at 12:30 p.m. at the center of each time zone, instead of nominal noon? Such a change would advance sunrise from 4:30 to 5:00 on the summer solstice – and perhaps from 7:30 to 8:00 at the winter solstice. True, that might lessen the severity of the sun waking someone up before 5:00 in summertime. But that would come at the price of delaying sunrise by half an hour in the wintertime. Such a delay might be no more tolerable than the delay during 1973-1974.
To dislike all things Russian has become fashionable. But in fact the Russians know all about adapting to extreme sunrise and sunset cycles. Moscow at this time of year sees seven hours of sunlight – but sees seventeen and a half hours in summer. (They call this “White Nights.”) In 2010, the Russian Federation abolished DST. Perhaps they know something we don’t.
The solution to the time changes
So abolishing Daylight Savings Time, as Donald Trump phrased his proposal, would probably be the best replacement for time changes. Farm productivity would rise immediately, depending as it does on the sunlight cycle. Simply eliminating time changes would improve the people’s heart health – and make the streets and roads safer. Imagine many fewer bleary-eyed drivers at what was once “spring forward” time.
True enough, many of the city dwellers would have to give up long summer evenings with longer daylight hours. But as mentioned, the alternative would be an intolerable traffic hazard in wintertime, especially for children going to school.
Trump deserves much credit for taking the idea seriously – as his newfound friend Elon Musk also seems to be doing. Again, the most important change he can make is to eliminate the semiannual time changes. That alone would be a great boon to all the people – in city and country both.
Link to:
The article:
https://cnav.news/2024/12/14/news/time-changes-trump-next-target/
Video:
Uniform Time Act of 1966:
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-80/pdf/STATUTE-80-Pg107.pdf
Trump’s Truth on time changes:
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/113647254141876924
Supporting articles:
https://www.almanac.com/states-object-changing-clocks-daylight-saving-time
https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/03/06/daylight-saving-time-at-what-cost/the-economic-toll-of-daylight-saving-time#:~:text=A%20recent%20estimate%20of,the%20clocks.&text=put%20the%20cost%20to,the%20clocks.&text=economy%20at%20over%20%24434,the%20clocks.&text=simply%20from%20a%20subtle,the%20clocks.
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