Andrew Yang: Please Endorse Standard Time
2020 September 29
Andrew Yang
Humanity Forward
PO Box 214
Midtown Station
New York, New York 10018
Re: Please amend endorsement from DST to Standard Time, for health, children, and climate.
Dear Andrew,
Thank you for continuing to move humanity forward after the close of your groundbreaking presidential campaign. Even before your first debate appearance, I personally lauded your prioritization of science in politics. May I invite you again please to correct your previous stance on civil time, and to join the thousands of scientists and millions of children’s advocates who endorse permanent Standard Time as the best year-round clock for health, safety, kids, workers, and the environment?
For a few years now, several state and federal lawmakers have written many bills to replace Standard Time with permanent Daylight Saving Time (DST). In their press releases, these politicians erroneously cite evidence against DST as being solely against clock changes. I have been in contact with the authors of these studies, and while they are opposed to these politicians’ misrepresentations of their findings, there is little they can do to stop it.
Permanent Standard Time is supported by scores of nonprofits representing thousands of doctors and millions of community leaders in the US and abroad. Many are listed on the policy-endorsements page of Save Standard Time’s website (http://savestandardtime.com/endorsements/). Several have issued their own statements for permanent Standard Time (I will link a few at the end of this letter).
Permanent Standard Time best aligns civil clocks to humanity’s natural circadian rhythms. This alignment helps us find sleep more easily at night, and it lets us sleep longer in the morning. This significantly benefits sleep quality, mental and physical health, immunity, longevity, roadway and workplace safety, scholastic potential, workplace productivity, individual wages, energy usage, and pollution control.
Any state can restore permanent Standard Time at any time, without Congressional action, per the 1966 Uniform Time Act. But the lawmakers who seek permanent DST have continually ignored this. They falsely claim instead that Congress “must act” in their work to change federal law to allow permanent DST.
Permanent DST profits the likes of Big Oil, Big Golf, and Big Candy. For nearly a century, they have lobbied to extend DST into winter, despite ongoing resistance from advocates for public health and children’s well-being. The special interests for DST gained significant ground in the 1980s, after forming the National Daylight Saving Time Coalition. The Florida Chamber of Commerce was revealed just eleven days ago to be backing Senator Rubio’s new, so-called “emergency” bill for permanent DST (S.4582). The last time the US tried permanent DST (in 1974), eight children’s lives were taken, and the program was reverted early. Clearly we face a well-organized and well-funded force for permanent DST.
Please read the expert statements linked below from the many esteemed researchers who have spent years studying decades of data from millions of citizens in their relevant fields. Please retract your prior support for permanent DST, and come forward with an endorsement of permanent Standard Time, before the permanent-DST bills gain more ground. Please acknowledge the peer-reviewed science of this issue, and join this effort to improve the health and well-being of millions of Americans every morning and night.
Thanks again for your ongoing work,
Jay Pea
Founder
Save Standard Time
PO Box 40238
San Francisco, California 94140
American Academy for Sleep Medicine (2020). “Call for Elimination of Daylight Saving Time”. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine. https://aasm.org/american-academy-of-sleep-medicine-calls-for-elimination-of-daylight-saving-time/
Block, Gene & Meijer, Johanna (2019). “Who Wants to Go to Work in the Dark? Californians Need Permanent Standard Time”. UCLA Newsroom. https://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/who-wants-to-go-to-work-in-the-dark
Canadian Society for Chronobiology (2019). “Turn Back the Clock on Daylight Savings: Why Standard Time All Year Round Is the Healthy Choice”. The Globe and Mail. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-turn-back-the-clock-on-daylight-savings-why-standard-time-all-year/
Center for Circadian Biology (2019). “Daylight Saving Time Effects”. UCSD CCB. https://ccb.ucsd.edu/the-bioclock-studio/education-resources/infographics/index.html
Curtis, Annie (2019). “Daylight Saving Time: Harmed by Hands of the Clock”. The Irish Times. http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/daylight-saving-time-harmed-by-hands-of-the-clock-1.4064179
Cytowic, Richard (2020). “Too Many Reasons Why Daylight Saving Time Is Bad for You”. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-fallible-mind/202003/too-many-reasons-why-daylight-saving-time-is-bad-you
European Sleep Research Society (2018). “Joint Statement to the EU Commission on DST”. ESRS. https://esrs.eu/joint-statement-to-the-eu-commission/
Juda, Myriam et al (2019). “An Open Letter to the BC Government in Support of Permanent Standard Time”. Simon Fraser University. https://vault.sfu.ca/index.php/s/sAnv3Z4bcSwY4Gm
Kotchen, Matthew & Grant, Laura (2008). “Does Daylight Saving Time Save Electricity?”. Centre for Economic Policy Research. https://voxeu.org/article/does-daylight-saving-time-save-electricity
Meijer & Foster (2018). “Time to Change — But Only to ‘Wintertime’”. Daylight Academy. https://daylight.academy/news/time-to-change-but-only-to-wintertime/
RIVM (2019). “Standard Time More Beneficial for Public Health Than Summer Time”. Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu. https://www.rivm.nl/en/news/standard-time-more-beneficial-for-public-health-than-summer-time
Roenneberg, Till et al (2019). “Daylight Saving Time and Artificial Time Zones — A Battle Between Biological and Social Times”. Frontiers in Physiology. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2019.00944/full
Society for Research on Biological Rhythms (2019). “Why Should We Abolish Daylight Saving Time?”. Journal of Biological Rhythms. https://srbr.org/advocacy/daylight-saving-time-presskit/
Wagner, David & Barnes, Christopher (2014). “The Economic Toll of Daylight Saving Time”. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/03/06/daylight-saving-time-at-what-cost/the-economic-toll-of-daylight-saving-time
Watson, Nathaniel (2019). “Time to Show Leadership on the Daylight Saving Time Debate”. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6557642/?report=classic
A PDF of this letter has been emailed to Andrew Yang’s attention at his new organization, Humanity Forward.
