Oregon has passed a law this year saying that if our neighbors to the north and south change to permanent Daylight Saving Time, we will too. Washington has passed a similar law and California is expected to do the same. Unfortunately, California probably won’t be doing so this year, but perhaps next. But there are other states that have passed laws to do it, such as Florida.
But this change has to be approved by Congress. Federal law says states can either do DST for part of the year or Standard Time for the entire year. So Congress has to amend that law to allow permanent DST. What are the chances of that happening?
Unless every organization changes simultaneously, doing so unilaterally will disrupt peoples lives having to figure out a new schedule to accommodate differing hours.
Daylight Saving Time is when we lose an hour. If we stayed on DST permanently, we’d never get that lost hour back. We’re always waking up an hour too early. I want my hour back, dammit!
I get the impression that some people think DST gives you an extra hour of daylight.
It’s not extra; it just happens at a different time of day.
Which can be useful in the summer. But if it’s already going to be dark when I get out of work anyway, can I at least not have it be dark when I go in to work, too?
Actually, it’s not that the sun will set earlier if there’s DST in the wintertime (in fact, it’s the opposite); it’s that the mornings will be dark.
As per this page on TimeAndDate.com for Seattle, for example, with the current DST system (i.e., no DST in the winter months), on December 25th (one of the shortest days of the year), sunrise is at 7:56am, and sunset is at 4:22pm.
If DST were year-round, sunrise in Seattle on December 25th would not be until 8:56am, while sunset would be at 5:22pm.
The US went to year-round DST for a year or so in the mid 1970s, during the first oil crisis, with the thinking being that it might help save energy. People in the northern half of the U.S. were very upset about their kids having to leave for school in the dark, and that was at least one reason why the idea was quickly scrapped.
The real problem is that ever since they made DST longer than standard time, there’s been an extra accumulation of saved daylight. I’ve got boxes of the stuff in the attic, and you can’t even give it away. If we go to saving daylight ALL THE TIME, where are we going to put it all?
Years ago, I took a poll of my coworkers, asking if we had to go to either all Daylight or all Standard time, which they’d want. The overwhelming preference was for Daylight time. It was a small company, so there were only about a dozen people to ask, so likely not scientific. But I’d be surprised if the general populace didn’t agree.
I wish we would go to year round standard time. I like sunlight in the morning it makes life so much easier and I don’t really care if i have lights on when I come home from work.
Maybe I’m dense - why doesn’t the law just abolish DST and shift your time zone over one band? Which, if I’m reading this chart correctly would take you from GMT-7 to GMT-8, along with western Alaska
But I work second shift and am rarely even awake before 9 a.m. - more darkness in the morning sounds glorious. I’m thinking this is all on you for working your so-called “normal hours” like a crazy person ;).
That goes for the cows as well. We just need to selectively breed for lazy animals that sleep in so the farmers can as well.
Possibly so; most of the dislike for DST today, at least in the US, centers around the disruptions when the clocks change forward and back, not for DST itself.
That said, most Americans also probably don’t realize (or internalize) that year-round DST would lead to the sun coming up so late in the morning in the winter months (at least in the northern states). So, it’s easy to say “yeah, I wish DST were year round” now, but after a winter spent in DST, they might well change their minds.
