Some people objected to tampering with “God’s time.” But a religious perspective isn’t necessary to see that daylight saving time is out of step with the natural rhythm of life.
For ages, civilization divided the day at the time the sun was highest, and called it high noon. Standard time is natural time.
Eons earlier, the biological clocks of humans and other living things had set themselves to the same quotidian rhythm, beyond the power of any Congress or Legislature to change.
Farmers can’t instruct the roosters when to crow or tell cows when they need to be milked. There’s no persuading a teenager that it’s time to rise and shine, when the sun hasn’t.
Congress didn’t care. The semiannual clock changing ritual that it forced on America happened again at 2 a.m. Sunday. Now that clocks are set back to where they belong, they should stay there. Let this be the final “fall back,” and may “spring forward” be a fading memory by March.
It’s time for the Legislature to stand for year-round standard-time in Florida, even if other states don’t — and for Sen. Marco Rubio to stop trying to move the nation to permanent year-round daylight saving time (DST).
No news is good news
The Senate passed Rubio’s Sunshine Protection Act last year by unanimous consent, which meant most senators weren’t paying attention or didn’t care. Something so drastic deserves debate. The House didn’t take it up. This year, it has not budged in either house of Congress — a case of no news is good news.
Even better news would be if Rubio and others sought to repeal daylight saving time and make standard time permanent. That is much safer and healthier, and it might even pass.
Florida and 18 other states have endorsed year-round daylight saving time if Congress permits it (Florida’s state proposal passed with overwhelming bipartisan support five years ago). Please, no.
The last time Congress did that, during a 1974 energy crisis, it was so unpopular that it was quickly repealed.
Parents were irate about sending their kids to school bus stops with flashlights in mid-winter. Early-morning traffic deaths spiked, prompting cries of “Daylight Disaster Time.”
Sick of changing clocks
The arguments for again permanently imposing unnatural time go only so far, and not far enough.
People are literally sick and tired of resetting their clocks and smart appliances twice a year. The hour lost in spring precedes significant statistical increases in heart attacks. There’s evidence of more early-morning car crashes, though data is mixed as to whether that is offset by fewer accidents at night.
As for heart attacks, studies show from 4% to 29% more of them occur in the week after “spring forward.”
There’s less evidence that it saves any significant amount of energy, which has been the political rationale for DST here and abroad through wars and oil shortages. Instead, it appears to coincide with the business models of big box stores, golf courses and other businesses that can profit from later sunset.
A medical consensus
The AMA and American Academy of Sleep Medicine both favor permanent standard time. When the AMA House of Delegates acted a year ago, it said “issues other than patients’ health” were behind year-round DST.
Year-round DST would largely wipe out the good work the Legislature did this year, enacting a requirement (HB 733) that by 2026 the instructional day cannot begin in Florida before 8 a.m. for middle schools or 8:30 a.m. for high schools. Lawmakers should have finished the job and rescinded their 2018 call to Congress to enforce DST year-round.
Year-round natural time would improve student performance. Ask any high school teacher.
Benjamin Franklin is often credited — or blamed — for creating daylight saving time, but the Franklin Institute, a science museum in Philadelphia, says it’s “the one thing Franklin did not invent.”
According to its website, the legend owes to a tongue-in-cheek essay he wrote in 1784 while serving as an American diplomat in Paris. Startled from sleep by a noise to see daylight at 6 a.m., he wrote that “your readers, who have never seen sunshine before noon,” should readjust their sleep schedules to rise and retire with the sun.
He projected “immense savings” from the wax and tallow candles that would no longer need to be bought and proposed a tax on window shutters and restrictions on candle use. Every sunrise, he added, should be greeted with church bells and, if necessary, cannon fire to “wake the sluggards effectively.”
He meant only that they should adjust their habits, not their clocks. It would be more than a century before governments embraced that idea. How time flies. But the “extra hour” isn’t worth it. It’s time for DST to RIP.
The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board includes Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson, Opinion Editor Krys Fluker and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writer Martin Dyckman and Anderson. Send letters to insight@orlandosentinel.com.
