Spring Forward and Move Those Clocks (Hey, Didn’t We Vote to Get Rid of This?)

Tomorrow, Sunday, at 2 a.m. the time here in California will spring forward to 3 a.m. So, don’t forget to change your clock. The mornings will then be darker til a later time and the evenings lighter allowing more time after work to be outside.

But, some of you might be asking, what happened to Proposition 7 that California voters passed in 2018. Wasn’t that supposed to stop this time changing nonsense?

Yes, Prop. 7 passed (with around 60% of the votes). But, the proposition didn’t make the change to Daylight Saving Time permanent. It only gave approval for the legislature to make the change. So far, the California legislature hasn’t. It needs to pass a bill making the change to permanent Daylight Saving Time (by a two-thirds vote).  And then, the US Congress needs to agree with the change.

The bill to do this was introduced in December but hasn’t wound its way through the system yet.

“We started this practice to conserve energy during wartime,” said California state representative Kansen Chu in an article in the Escondido Grapevine, “but studies show that this is no longer the case. We are no longer saving energy, and studies have shown this practice increases risk of heart attacks, traffic accidents and crimes. It is time that we as a state reconsider whether this is still beneficial to our residents.”

Some scientists have come out in favor of not switching the clock because the abrupt change can be bad for people’s health.  According to this AP story,

Numerous studies have linked the start of daylight saving time in the spring with a brief spike in car accidents, and with poor performance on tests of alertness, both likely due to sleep loss….Disruptions to the body clock have been linked with obesity, depression, diabetes, heart problems and other conditions. Circadian biologists say these disruptions include tinkering with standard time by moving the clock ahead one hour in the spring…[In addition,]

Time changes mess with sleep schedules, a potential problem when so many people are already sleep deprived, says Dr. Phyllis Zee, a sleep researcher at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago.

About 1 in 3 U.S. adults sleep less than the recommended seven-plus hours nightly, and more than half of U.S. teens don’t get the recommended eight-plus hours on weeknights. One U.S. study found that in the week following the spring switch to daylight saving time, teens slept about 2½ hours less than the previous week. Many people never catch up during the subsequent six months.

Research suggests that chronic sleep deprivation can increase levels of stress hormones that boost heart rate and blood pressure, and of chemicals that trigger inflammation.

But opponents argue that having daylight last later in the evenings is nice but in the winter, if Daylight Saving Time is year round, children will be walking to school in the dark. They also point out that studies indicate that it is harder to get up when it is still dark outside.

Daylight Saving Time began in Germany in 1916 as a means of conserving energy. The US first adopted it for the same reason in 1918 but it has gone through various stops and restarts and reconfigurations since then.

According to Interesting Engineering,

On October 17, 1974, the U.S. returned to Standard Time until February 23, 1975, when DST resumed.

In April, 1976, a report by the National Bureau of Standards, which is today the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) entitled, “Review and Technical Evaluation of the DOT Daylight Saving Time Study” found DST provided no significant energy savings, but NIST did find there were increased fatalities among school children in the mornings.

The economy is one of the movers behind changing to Daylight Saving Time as the Interesting Engineering article goes on to note,

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce noted that DST increased the amount of shopping done after work, and the golf industry noted a considerable increase in revenue of “$200 million in additional sales of golf clubs and greens fees.”

Wyoming Senator Michael Enzi and Michigan Representative Fred Upton noted that DST increased candy sales for Halloween. In 1987, both senators from Idaho, Larry Craig, and Mike Crapo voted to extend DST, reasoning that fast-food restaurants would sell more French fries during DST. Fries are made from Idaho potatoes.

If we keep changing time like we are now, studies show this could be bad for our health.

If we stop changing to Daylight Saving Time and just use Standard Time, then we lose that precious extra hour of daylight when we get home, and this could be bad for the economy.

If we permanently change to Daylight Saving Time, children will be walking to school in the dark (unless we change school start times) and people will struggle harder to get up without the prompting of morning light coming through their windows.

If you got to vote, would you prefer to change like we do now twice a year? Or, to use Standard Time–the sun rises at an earlier time on the clock and leaves at a an earlier time, too? Or do you prefer to stay on Daylight Saving Time–the sun rises at a later time on the clock and disappears later, too?