what’s at stake
There’s broad, bipartisan momentum in Congress behind ending the twice-a-year change of clocks in much of the US. The problem is, lawmakers can’t quite agree on the right solution.
The House this week passed a bill to make daylight saving time permanent in a 308-117 vote, with advocates arguing the move would increase economic activity and improve safety by adding more sunlight in the evening.
The measure faces roadblocks in the Senate, however, due to concerns about the impact of cutting down on morning sunlight. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., has raised concerns about the safety risks to children who would commute to school in the dark, as well as to early-morning workers.
And some health experts caution against a permanent switch to daylight saving time, arguing it would disrupt the body’s internal clock, or circadian rhythm.
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who’s making the case
Rep. Aaron Bean, R-Fla., a cosponsor of the bill that passed, said he’d be fine with either daylight saving or standard time — but that lawmakers need to “lock the clock”:
“We all agree that locking the clock would be better for health, for kids, for families, for productivity. I’ve said I will vote for either one that came up. If there was a vote to say we’re going to stick on standard time, I’d vote for it. This one came up, has a little more momentum right now. We could always adjust it once we lock the clock for sure, and hopefully we’ll get there, and then we’ll have this second debate. If there’s another debate that we need to go back on standard time, we can do that. But first, let’s all agree the clock needs to be locked.”
Dr. Karin Johnson, co-chair of the Coalition for Permanent Standard Time’s steering committee, argued Congress should make standard time — not daylight saving time — permanent:
“The big issue with permanent daylight saving time is that, especially in the winter, it essentially robs us of our morning light that is really critical for setting our bodies’ clocks, our circadian rhythm, and those are really important for having us get enough and healthy sleep and having aligned circadian rhythms that help our bodies function appropriately. So with that, we see higher rates of things like heart disease, obesity, cancer, strokes — also higher rates of suicide and depression. Productivity and our brain function is worse, so we see higher accidents on the road. All of those are expected to be seen if we adopt permanent daylight saving time.”
Dr. Jamie Zeitzer, a circadian physiologist at Stanford who studied the issue and found the clock change to be particularly bad for people’s health, said Congress was rushing into a decision without enough data:
“I think it’s great that we’re having this conversation, but I wish they weren’t trying to push a bill through without the data. I wish they invested some in getting a diverse group of people together who actually study the economics of this, the health consequences, exercise, demography, all things like that.”
“The reason we had done this study is because people in the sleep and circadian field, my colleagues, were putting out statements saying, ‘Oh, you have to be in standard time.’ And they had no data. So now at least we have some data to talk about, and I wish other fields would do this so that we could actually have a reasonable conversation.”
Notable
- Golf course operators are among those pushing Congress to enact permanent daylight saving time, Golf.com writes.
- The White House is pushing for the House-passed bill, arguing the change would “benefit Americans by protecting precious daylight during the evening, when people are most likely to be awake and active.”
- The US implemented permanent daylight saving time in the 1970s and it was unpopular, NBC News reports.