Quickest End to Clock Change Is Permanent Standard Time
The quickest way to end Daylight Saving Time’s clock changes in North America is to restore permanent Standard Time. Congress already permits states to restore permanent Standard Time, while permanent DST is federally forbidden. Arizona, Hawaii, and all US territories restored permanent Standard Time decades ago, without difficulty or drawback.[Craven][Jennings][Korch][Mauer][Mercury][Skelton 2018][Watson]
Permanent DST would require sweeping change to federal law by Congress — which could take several years, which might never occur, or which might be changed then reverted (as happened in 1974).[Alexia 2020][Craven][Crick][Herf][Lindsay 2019–12–18][Merline][Skelton 2018][Skelton 2019][Ripley] Permanent DST defies the people’s will for an immediate end to clock changes; it’s a waste of legislative time and taxpayer money.
A return instead to permanent Standard Time would cost nothing and could be enacted in mere months. It would benefit public health, public safety, the environment, energy usage, productivity, and wages. It would prove more popular both for its quickness and its lasting approval. It would be an easy win for lawmakers.[Herf & Longcore][Roenneberg 2019–08]
No bill can make winter’s daylight as long as summer’s daylight. DST is mistakenly associated with summer’s naturally longer days, but summer days will still be just as long under permanent Standard Time as they were under DST.[Meijer & Foster][Roenneberg 2019–08][US Naval]
DST is akin to vanity sizing, wherein clothiers arbitrarily assign different numbers to the same sizes to make consumers feel thinner. DST’s arbitrarily added hour falsely makes some people feel they have more daylight. We could add six hours to the clock to postpone daylight until a false midnight, but it would then be dark until a false noon.[Herf]
Standard Time is the most practical model for timekeeping that is based in objective reality. It’s an approximation of solar time, which is itself a geometric measurement of nature. Twelve noon corresponds to the sun’s highest point in the sky; twelve midnight corresponds to the darkest point of night. Twelve was chosen for its even fractions (half, third, quarter).[US Naval]
Standard Time facilitates many simple estimations: time of day from the sun’s position, time of night from the moon or stars, time of sunrise or sunset, time zone differences, latitude on earth, sunburn hours… This knowledge — this connection to nature — is needlessly obscured under DST.[Christensen][Hirsberg & Winther][Kher]
Read more of Save Standard Time’s concerns, browse over a hundred sources, interact with the Sunrise Chart, see the list of policy endorsers, take action, browse images, and read more about Save Standard Time on our website: SaveStandardTime.com
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Jay Pea, Founder, Save Standard Time
