QUICKEST & SIMPLEST SOLUTION

The quickest way to end clock changes in North America is to restore permanent Standard Time. Congress already permits states to restore permanent Standard Time, while permanent Daylight Saving Time is federally prohibited. Arizona, Hawaii, and all US territories restored permanent Standard Time decades ago, without difficulty or drawback.1234567

Permanent DST would require Congress to completely rewrite the Uniform Time Act—which could take several years, which might never occur, or which might be changed then reverted (as happened in 1974).16891011121314 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.1516

Some pundits suggest permanently setting clocks halfway between Standard Time and DST, but Standard Time is already a compromise between “fast” and “slow” time. Halving DST’s misalignment might halve its harms, but ditching it entirely is most healthful. Permanent Standard Time is also simpler to accomplish, both from a legislative perspective (noted above) and a technical standpoint. It is easier for software and business to continue the whole-hour offsets from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) that have been used in the United States for decades.

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.171618

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.10

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).18

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.192021