Set it and forget it

A formal petition to Congress on the occasion of Daylight Saving Time. Or: Bellyaching with a side of peer-reviewed research.

I record my essays for those who prefer to listen. You’ll find that here. ⬇

Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán

The news arrives like a series of body blows. I absorb some, deflect some, feel myself pinned against the ropes, pummeled and praying my country finds the left hook needed to bring this opponent to the mat for good.

I am a person squinting into the gloom at 6:30 in the morning, thinking about how much brighter the world felt just a few days ago.

Oh, wait. That’s right. It was brighter just a few days ago, before we stole an hour of daylight from the front end of the day, stuck it on the back end, and called it progress.

Future societies will laugh. Out loud.

I recognize the incongruity of a rant on Daylight Saving Time juxtaposed with the severity of everything else that’s happening. But this feels like something that might actually be within reach. The continued existence of Daylight Saving Time is a particular kind of bureaucratic absurdity that has survived on inertia, habit, and the public’s tolerance for feeling like shit twice a year for no reason.

We have bigger problems, yes. We also have this one. And unlike most of the others, the American people have already reached a verdict on this one. They’re just waiting for someone to act on it. Congress could fix it tomorrow. Doing so would cost nothing, harm little, and improve the health and well-being of every person in the country. Given that Congress has fixed nothing lately, I’m thinking this could be a kind of morale-builder, a pilot project to let them know how good it feels to do something right.

Let the record show that I am aware that Americans will register a complaint about anything, and that I am, at this moment, exhibit A. But there’s bellyaching and then there’s bellyaching with peer-reviewed citations. I’d like to think this is the latter.

I am therefore presenting my case in a format that our legislators might find familiar, in the slim but not impossible hope that they will recognize the form and mistake it for something they are supposed to act on.

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To the Members of the United States Congress:

I write to you today in a state of profound, well-documented exhaustion, which, as it happens, is your fault. Though the population cannot wrap its weary head around what to call this hateable thing, whether it is a single saving or many, I believe we can agree that dicking around with the clocks every spring and fall is costing us sanity we cannot afford to lose.

RESOLUTION

WHEREAS the practice of setting clocks ahead an hour each spring, colloquially known as Daylight Saving Time, has been inflicted on the American public, in various forms, since 1918, making it a year older than the pop-up toaster, which at least had the decency to improve morning life rather than ruin it;

WHEREAS Daylight Saving Time has approximately nothing to do with farmers, as any sentient person could confirm by talking to one, especially a farmer with livestock, or anybody with a pet dog, or a toddler, for that matter, noting that animals and small children do not observe the Uniform Time Act and must be fed and milked on their own schedules regardless of what the government has decided the hour is;

WHEREAS the actual origins of the practice involve, in no particular order: a British entomologist in New Zealand who wanted more evening hours to collect insects; a British builder who was annoyed about losing daylight on the golf course; and the demands of wartime energy conservation, none of which constitutes a compelling justification for disrupting the sleep of 340 million Americans twice a year, in perpetuity, forever;

WHEREAS both of the aforementioned men were, notably, British, and we’ve had this thing about kings in the past, and yet we have been obediently adjusting our clocks according to the whims of two dead dudes, which suggests the revolution was only partially successful;

WHEREAS the most vocal advocates for Daylight Saving Time are not the farmers you have been picturing, but rather the retail industry, restaurant and tourism groups, outdoor recreation businesses, and the Chamber of Commerce, entities that benefit financially from consumers having extra evening daylight in which to spend money, and which have lobbied accordingly for decades, because nothing says representative democracy like restructuring human biology so that somebody can sell more lawn furniture;

WHEREAS the popular sentiment “just pick one and leave it alone”—while correct in spirit—misses a crucial distinction: the two options are not equivalent, and simply picking the wrong permanent time would be rather like resolving to stop banging your head against the wall by nailing a foot to the floor;

WHEREAS it bears stating plainly that we are not, in fact, creating daylight; that the Earth’s relationship with the sun remains stubbornly unchanged regardless of our administrative preferences; that there are still, as there have always been, approximately 24 hours in a day; and that the daylight we are “saving” is simply stolen from the morning and deposited in the evening like some sort of circadian Ponzi scheme;

WHEREAS enjoying long summer evenings is not wrong, exactly, it ignores what that same arrangement looks like in January with permanent DST, when the pleasant July trade-off becomes darkness at both ends of the day, which is not, one assumes, what anyone has in mind;

WHEREAS the United States attempted permanent Daylight Saving Time in 1974, during the Nixon administration, and this sentence should need no further commentary, but let the record show that the Nixon administration, which had not distinguished itself as a reliable steward of the public good, could not make this work either, and the experiment was abandoned within a year amid public outcry and the specific objection that children were walking to school in complete darkness, which raises a separate and troubling question about why we send children to school so early in the first place, except to prepare them for jobs they will one day resent;

WHEREAS one Marianna Byg, of Columbus, Ohio, observed at the time that the Nixon administration had “not seen the light for so long that it thinks it fitting for the rest of the population to be in the dark at least part of the time,” a remark that, tested against the present moment, holds up disturbingly well;

WHEREAS the scientific and medical community, having spent considerable time and grant money studying what happens to the human body when you jerk its clock around twice a year, would like to report the following: a spike of as much as 24% in heart attacks in the days after the spring shift; increased rates of stroke; a rise in depressive episodes after the autumn transition; more migraines; higher rates of type 2 diabetes; flares of inflammatory bowel conditions; and an increase in fatal car accidents—all in exchange for one additional hour of post-work daylight, during which you are invited to go shopping;

WHEREAS nineteen states are poised to adopt permanent Daylight Saving Time, which requires an act of Congress to implement, and which we have already established is the wrong permanent time to pick, meaning these state legislatures have gone to the trouble of demanding the less healthy option, which is, actually, not at all surprising;

WHEREAS this administration has demonstrated a heretofore unmatched capacity for shockingly harmful disruption, and the elimination of Daylight Saving Time would represent a rare opportunity to disrupt something that actually deserves it, we note only that the chance to do one unambiguously correct thing remains available, unclaimed, just sitting there, like an hour of morning light we keep throwing away;

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the United States Congress hereby enact permanent standard time across all states and territories, put the clocks to bed, leave them there, and allow the exhausted body politic to wake up in daylight, wind down after sunset, and stop explaining to their children why the sky is black at breakfast.

You will not do this, of course. But the record should show that someone asked.

~Elizabeth

She was unavailable for comment. She had a schedule to keep.

I have a daughter in Arizona, where they opted out of this nonsense decades ago and have been sleeping normally ever since. Hawaii figured this out in 1967. The residents of American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands have never once changed a clock and appear to be managing. These are not radical experiments. They are functioning proof that the thing can be done.

Let’s wake up the comments, shall we?

• Tell me how you really feel about the biannual time shift. Take your time. We have 24 hours.

• If you could abolish one other thing that has survived purely on inertia—a habit, a law, a social convention—what would it be?

• Be honest: did you actually change all your clocks this weekend, or are you still getting around to the ones that didn’t do it automatically, like I am in my car?

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Afterward:

I’m including this section as a way to turn reflection into action, if you want. Each week, I’m sharing one small, concrete way to raise your voice, because sustained, visible engagement is one of the few levers we still have to influence the world around us.

Try this:

This week, ask yourself what you're putting up with, big or small, because it's always been that way. Consider what that might be costing you and whether there’s a way to shift it. Sometimes the most radical act is just deciding a thing no longer deserves your compliance.

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Receipts, as promised:

Scientific American / PNAS: Our Body Clock Might Prefer Permanent Standard Time

American Medical Association: AMA calls for permanent standard time

American Academy of Sleep Medicine — New position statement supports permanent standard time

NIH/PMC: Measurable health effects associated with the daylight saving time shift

History.com: 8 things you may not know about daylight saving time

Time Magazine: The U.S. Tried Permanent Daylight Saving Time Before. Here’s What Happened