LockTheClock

Fix Daylight Saving Time for good!

March 2021

Is Change Coming to European Summertime in 2021?

Of all the oddities of Daylight Saving Time, one of the oddest is that the United States shifts the clocks the second Sunday of March, and much of Europe does it on the last Sunday of March.

Maybe even more weird is Israel and some nearby countries, however, which switch on the last Friday of the month for the Spring Forward change, but then on a Sunday for the Fall Back change. Go figure.

And then there’s Iran, which changes on the spring and fall equinox, no matter what day of the week it comes on.

But let’s just focus on Europe, which for the first Spring Forward change in a long time doesn’t include Great Britain, home of Greenwich, and the home of Greenwich Mean Time, otherwise known as Universal Coordinated Time, or Zulu Time… because why have one name when you can have three!

Time zone globe

Time zone globe explinationPhotos taken by me when I drug my family to the Royal Greenwich Observatory on vacation because I am that big of a time nerd.

Brexit has not yet hit the clocks, and those in England will change this weekend along with the rest of Europe.

I’ve written before about how I thought the European solution was the best possible solution, and then I wrote about how it is now failing, in Europe. 

In short, the idea was, I thought, that the European Union decided there would be no more clock changing, and each member country had a year or so to figure out what time zone it wanted to land in permanently. It turns out that I had it a bit wrong, that they would only #LockTheClock after all the member countries decided which time zone to land in.

So where they landed is that no country has wanted to decide. They talk about it, but nobody has taken action.

It is a hard decision, and perhaps nowhere is it harder than in Spain, which has a particularly, well, Spanish approach to time.

Back in WWII, Franco wanted to align Spain with Germany, and adopted German time. If you go there (and I recommend it highly) you will see that the sun sets in Madrid at 9:49 p.m. on the longest day of the year. That’s late!

The crazy part (to me, anyway) is that the Spaniards are just getting going at that time. If you go to dinner at 9 p.m. even a popular resteraunt will be empty because the real Spaniards don’t eat until 10 p.m. or later. After all, that’s just when it’s getting dark.

So, should Spain get more aligned with the sun? Right now “solar noon” in Madrid comes at 2:16 p.m. on June 21st, so you could make the case that Spain could make a two-hour shift and still have some sunlight to spare.

But longtime readers of this blog know that I don’t think I should be dictating the “proper” solution to anyone in any U.S. state, and certainly not to any European country. If having the sun stay up that late is the quintessence of Spain, who am I to judge? If Spaniards want instead to have the clock aligned to the sun in ways that are more similar to their neighbors, that’s great, too.

All I know is that just as with everywhere else in the world that forces the barbarism of clock changing on the populace, this coming Monday will be deadly, with increases in heart attacks, strokes, traffic accidents, etc. The list is long and scary, and the Spaniards should do something about that along with all other civilized countries.

Will it be the European Union that leads the way to clock sanity? It was the Europeans who started the whole mess back in WWI, maybe they will be the ones to end it?

If I had to bet, I’d actually say it’s the U.S. that will lead the world on this topic. Our country is bitterly divided right now on so many topics, but on this one there is unsurpassed unity.

 

More proof that #LockTheClock is the ultimate in a bipartisan topic:
Make Daylight Saving Time permanent: Sens. Patty Murray and Marco Rubio https://t.co/dyjtleQYim via @usatoday

— Scott Yates, #LockTheClock (@lock_the_clock) March 27, 2021

The one exception

I think it’s a bad idea to change the clock twice a year. (Well, only once a year is it deadly when we take away an hour of sleep, but…)

There is one country, however, that I actually encourage it. For now.

I was fortunate enough to visit Ukraine a couple of years ago. It’s an amazing country that has suffered enormously under Russian AND Trumpian manipulation and occupation, and yet manages to be optimistic and friendly.

The people there want to break away from Russia in every way possible, and one of those ways is by keeping time with Europe, and not Russia. Europe changes the clocks, Russia doesn’t. (Perhaps the one move Putin has made that I agree with.)

So for the people of Ukraine, changing the clocks is another way that they can signal to themselves and to the world that they are European and democratic.

My only hope is that everyone in Kyiv, and the rest of Ukraine, takes it easy on Monday morning when the alarm clocks will go off an hour earlier than expected, leading to all those negative health impacts.

And with a little luck, perhaps the U.S. will lead the way to bring freedom from the tyranny of clock-changing to the whole world.

Kyiv freedomPhoto by me taken in Independence Square in Kyiv in 2018.

New Daylight Saving Time Polling Shows Change is Coming

Sometimes on this blog I back into the news at a leisurely pace. For this one, well… here’s the story I would have written back when I was a reporter:

Supermajority now favors year round Daylight Saving Time

WASHINGTON — A new poll shows that preference for permanent Daylight Saving Time has grown to new highs with 68 percent of respondents saying that they support the move and 14 percent opposing.

The poll conducted by Morning Consult and Politico asked nearly 2,000 registered voters if they supported bipartisan legislation to make Daylight Saving Time permanent. Fully 45 percent said that they “strongly support” the legislation, and another 23 percent said that they “somewhat support” it. Seven percent each said they either strongly or somewhat oppose the bill, and another 18 percent said they didn’t know or did not have an opinion.

DST polling

While previous polling has shown a plurality of support for Permanent DST, this is the first national poll from a professional polling company that has shown such a strong majority. 

The Politico/Morning Consult poll surveyed 1,993 registered voters and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. A breakdown of the data showed nearly identical results for men and women, as well as Democrats, Republicans and independents. There was also no significant difference based on education, religion, employment, area of the country or if the respondents live in an urban, suburban or rural area.

…

 

If I was still a reporter, this would be the point in the story that I would insert a quote from someone, well, probably someone like the current version of me, saying something like: The momentum was clearly on the side of fixing Daylight Saving Time when you looked at all the action in the state legislatures and in D.C., so it’s no surprise that this poll shows that the legislatures really are doing what the people want them to do, and that’s to lock the clock into what we now call Daylight Saving Time, but will soon become known as just ‘time.’

Then I would probably do what all the news stories do these days, and insert a paragraph about all the negative health consequences of changing the clocks, especially in the spring when we are robbed of an hour of sleep.

 

Since I got this news, I have been grappling with a question that I don’t really have an answer to, and that is: Why?

The polls have never been really clear because they often ask the wrong questions, but in general all the polling breaks down something like about 50 percent want Permanent DST, 25 percent want Permanent ST, and about 25 percent don’t care or are fine leaving things as they are.

What would cause about half of the Permanent ST and half of the “don’t care” people to move to the side of Permanent Daylight Saving Time?

I really don’t know, but here are a couple of guesses:

 

Guess one: They asked the question right around the Spring Forward change.

It could be that people just so dislike being robbed of an hour of sleep that they essentially said: Please, just make it stop! That could be. I hope the pollsters ask that question again, but at the rate things are moving they may not get another chance because it may be fixed soon.

But that guess doesn’t really hold up because the poll asked about a specific bit of bipartisan legislation, so I don’t think that’s it.

 

Guess two: The people arguing for permanent Standard Time are doing it so badly that opinion is turning against them. 

This is something I’ve seen firsthand a couple of times now. Permanent Standard Time proponents will show up at a state legislature, and basically pontificate about how they have a monopoly on truth and science, and make statements that amount to: If you don’t do what we tell you to do then you are an idiot. Before this year I bridled a bit when one of them would show up to testify, but now I welcome it because they are so off-putting that they actually help swing votes over to the side of fixing DST. 

But the reality is that all the efforts being made to convince people that we should only lock the clocks if we do so in Standard Time are getting essentially zero traction, so I don’t think that’s it. Indeed, if circadian sleep scientists hadn’t been speaking up, the “strongly oppose” may have gone even lower than seven percent.

 

Guess three: Young people are leading the way.

For years now I’ve thought that younger people are better than people over 50 (like me) at realizing that the conventions of the past are not rooted in what’s best, but instead just rooted in doing things the way they have always been done. I give them credit for looking at older people who tell them we have to change the clocks twice a year for the farmers, and saying: Wha… Huh? And then those young people get elected and decided to do something about it.

But the one part of the crosstabs that shows some deviation from the rest of the results is that GenZ has only 22 percent who strongly support the legislation. (Then again, only four percent strongly oppose it. Maybe that generation just doesn’t have “strong” feelings just yet.) So, again, not a really clear indicator of much.

 

So, is this all good news in the fight to #LockTheClock?

Yes. It is.

Politicians do look at polls, especially on stuff like this where they are not getting direction from their party leaders. As we’ve seen, there is no partisan angle on this at all.

When you can cast a vote that has only 14 percent of the voters who might potentially be mad at you, well, that is an easy Yes vote.

But because I am in this for the long haul, I do have a little bit of a worry that it is so popular, that we won’t take the time to do it properly, and then we could have a rebound problem in the years to come.

This is why I wrote that my idea for a federal proposal would give states a bit of breathing room. 

As much as I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to never have to change the clocks again, unless Congress can act really quickly (like, before June), my personal opinion is that we should actually wait and put the change in next year, in 2022.

That will give each state enough time to really decide what time zone it wants to lock into. 

In general, and this poll confirms it, most people and most states want to lock into permanent Daylight Saving Time, the one we use in the summer.

Look at the heartland states like Kansas, which neighbors my home state of Colorado, but is on the western edge of the Central Time zone. (Well, mostly.) I spoke to the legislator working to Lock the Clock there and told him that maybe Kansas could unify the state in one time zone, and lock into Standard Time. He told me that his constituents really want to be in Daylight Time year round. The poll confirms that. Also, they already are getting up in the dark and going to school in the dark, and they just want a little sunlight at the end of the day. 

But is that really the case in, say, Indiana? Most, but not all, of that state is in the Eastern Time Zone, but in permanent DST the sun wouldn’t come up until about 9 a.m. in the winter. If they go through a whole winter and look at what that might be, then the legislature could take that up in their session that starts in January of 2022, and make a decision about what that state wants to permanently. They may want to reunite their state into one time zone, and join their neighbors in Illinois. Then when we have the last-ever Spring Forward time change in the U.S. in March of 2022, Indiana would just stay the same.

This is why I say that if the U.S. Congress wants to act this year to #LockTheClock permanently it needs to do so now. NOW! 

If they wait past about the first of June, maybe the first of July, then the state legislatures won’t practically have time to take any action before the Fall Back time change.

 

Bottom line: This is great news, and I hope Congress takes action based on this. I just hope they either do it really quickly, or that they amend the current bills to make it easier for states that are on the border of a time zone to pick which side of the line they want to end up on permanently.

But to amend the bill, the first thing we need to do is get a bill a hearing. That’s why my previous post calling everyone to exert whatever influence they have on Senator Maria Cantwell asking her, politely, to give the Sunshine Act a hearing. Now you have all the data you need to convince her that this is something the people really want!

Federal Bills to Stop Daylight Saving Time – Update for 2021

I recently wrote about what’s going on in state legislatures around the country. One of the criticisms that I sometimes get is that I shouldn’t pay much attention to what happens in the states because the federal law needs to get fixed, and state-level efforts are pointless.

That’s just wrong, but you’ll have to read that post to figure out why. Short version… in a movement like this… all progress is progress.

Still, a federal law would fix things, so I am all in favor of federal legislation, and with the announcement yesterday about the new version of the Sunshine Protection Act, (and the upcoming—deadly—change to the clocks), attention has turned again to D.C. So, let’s look at what is happening.

First, here are the active bills in a handy table updated continuously from the remarkably helpful people at BillTrack50.

2021 Federal DST Bills

 

As of this writing, there are three bills, two of them with identical language. I’ve been in touch with the staff of the sponsors of all three bills. I’m always careful to respect confidential information, and also be mindful of the legislative process, so everything I say here will not be a surprise to them.

I’ve told all of them essentially the same thing:

  1. I support you.
  2. I will do whatever I can to help.
  3. I hope that as these measures move forward we can adjust them a bit.

I was hoping that this year one of them would introduce a bill set up the way I think will work best, but because I do all of this as a hobby in my spare time, and because I am not the most organized person in the world, I didn’t get that message to the right people at the right time, so here we are.

Will Daylight Saving Time be Eliminated?

Where we are, however, is in a great position. When Sen. Rubio introduced his act the first time back in 2018, his effort sunk like a pebble tossed into a pond that didn’t leave a ripple. When he introduced it again in 2019 the proposal got two things that it didn’t get the first time: Lots of bipartisan cosponsors AND competing legislation in the House. Both are signs of momentum, and that’s what it takes, I’m told, to get things done in D.C.

Really, if it hadn’t been for, well, 2020 (and all that implies) this may have happened last year.

So this is the year, I think. A reporter recently asked me what the odds were that it would happen this year, and I didn’t have a good answer at the tip of my tongue. Now with a moment to think about it I think it’s 50-50 this year, and at least 75-25 next year.

What are the steps to have that happen?

At this point, really only one step, which is for one of these bills to get a hearing.

There is a chance that the concept of #LockTheClock could get woven into some other bill. That’s what happened the last time there was a change to DST. Some of you may remember that in the U.S. we formerly changed the clocks for the spring in April, and now it’s in March. That change, and one to push it just one week later (from last Sunday of October to the first Sunday of November, a change lobbied for by the candy industry) was shoehorned into the Energy Policy Act of 2005, and took effect in 2007. 

The same thing could happen now. Let’s say the Support Local Transportation Act gains momentum, and seems destined to pass. A legislator could ask for an amendment to #LockTheClock to that bill. The clocks in the U.S. are managed by the Department of Transportation (a throwback to when train travel necessitated the use of uniform time) so it is not that much of a stretch. It could easily happen.

But until we have something like that proposed, what we have are the bills in front of us, so let’s take a look at those in the form of a handy table:

 

  Sunshine Protection Act (Senate)
(Sen. Rubio, SB 623, and HR 69)		 Daylight Act
(Rep. Stewart, HR 214)
Central Idea  Immediate switch to make DST the new Standard Time. Ability for states to adopt DST as their own Standard Time
Main points in favor 1. Ends clock changing for all states uniformly.
2. Puts all states into generally more popular DST unless they take immediate action to opt out.		 1. Gives states flexibility to end clock changing if they choose to do so.
2. Allows states the ability to go into the time zone most popular for that state.
Main points against 1. Moves too quickly.
2. Forces states to act that
may not be ready.		 1. Moves too slowly.
2. Creates situation of patchwork
and constant changes.
Current status Waiting for a hearing in Senate Commerce. Waiting for a hearing in House Commerce.

A compromise proposal would have the goal of retaining the points in favor of both bills, while eliminating the points against.

What Congress Could Do to Fix DST in the USA 

This proposal I think does that:

  1. Amend the Uniform Time Act to say that the mandate to change clocks will end after the Spring Forward Change in 2022.
  2. The time zones will be adjusted forward using the language from Senate Bill, Section 2(b)1.
  3. Allows any state that is on the border of a time zone to decide before March of 2022 which side of the line it wants to be on after the final “spring forward” switch.
    1. If a state doesn’t make any decision then it will move into the new Standard Time and so it will “spring forward” in March of 2022 and remain in that time permanently.
    2. If a time-zone-border state takes action through its legislature or through an initiated ballot measure on the ballot in 2021, that state can choose to “fall back” in November of 2022 and remain in that new standard time permanently.

Also, optionally, we may want to put language in the bill that directs the Department of Transportation to publish new sunrise times for each state with the instruction that those will be sent to each school district, so that before the school year the local districts can adjust their daily start times to allay any concerns about schools starting too early relative to the sunrise in the winter. (It’s a canard that later sunrises are dangerous for school children waiting at bus stops, but there is some reputable research showing that teens need more time to sleep in the mornings so this should probably happen anyway. And if we’ve learned anything in the last year, it’s that schools can be flexible about their schedules!)

We may also want to work with fire departments to have them adjust their guidelines that people check their smoke detectors at the point of the time change, and instead check them on the first day of fall and the first day of spring.

Can We Fix the Current DST Bills?

Now, if you were like me just recently, you might say that it would be best to amend these bills now… get them all fixed up before they even get a hearing! Well, that shows how you just don’t understand Washington!

Look, I don’t know anything except what I’m hearing from the staffers. In short, trying to amend the bills now is like negotiating against yourself. If someone has a better idea, let them float that idea, but let them do it in committee.

Right now, the one and only goal is to get them a hearing in front of a committee. That’s where advocates like me and others can make their voices heard and compromise can be reached.

Trying to adjust the bills now is like trying to wear fancy pants when you are on a zoom call—kinda pointless.

The Key to Fixing DST May Be Sen. Maria Cantwell

That leads me to finally wrap up this post with one central point: Let’s get a hearing for one of these bills!

For the bill that’s gotten the most attention, the one in the Senate, the person who holds the keys is Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington State. In Congress, the person who runs the committee decides what bills get a hearing, so she is the pivotal person.

Cantwell-dstMaria Cantwell, D-Washington State

 

What’s fun about that for me is this: Sen. Rubio, a Republican, just couldn’t get the last chair of the committee, another Republican, to give the bill a hearing. No reason was ever given publicly or privately that I heard about.

So now that control of the Senate has changed, that means Sen. Cantwell is in charge. How fantastic would it be for small-d democracy if a big-D Democrat is the person who made it possible for a Republican like Sen. Rubio to get his bill heard? I for one think it would be spectacularly fantastic because this is an issue that absolutely refuses to be put in an ideological box.

Also working in our favor is the fact that she represents Washington, a state whose legislators overwhelmingly voted for a bill to #LockTheClock in permanent Daylight Time, and was one of the first of the modern era to do so back in 2018.

That means our job—yours and mine if you are reading this—is to put the full court press on Sen. Cantwell to give this bill a hearing. We need to be respectful, etc., but we need to collectively ask everyone who might have any connection to her or her staff: When will you give the Sunshine Protection Act a hearing?

 

In the House, we have a similar situation, but unfortunately a bit more track record that is not promising. Essentially the same bill was introduced during the last congressional session, and the same chair, Rep. Frank Pallone, D-New Jersey, never gave it a hearing.

Here, it could be partisan politics. The bill last session was introduced by a conservative Republican from Utah, who retired. The main sponsor now is another conservative Republican and he has only one cosponsor, yet another Republican. I’ve been telling people literally for six years now: If you want your bill to pass, get some cosponsors from the other party!

So if you happen to be Frank Pallone’s brother-in-law, or you have some other really strong connection, tell him to ignore the sponsors and give this bill a hearing. Or, he could give a hearing to the mirror bill to Rubio’s proposal, which does have a nice bipartisan set of cosponsors. I’m sure Sen. Rubio will be fine with someone else getting the credit on this, as long as he gets to have a night’s sleep that doesn’t get cut short by an hour.

 

Thanks for reading, and if you have ideas of how we can convince Sen. Cantwell or Rep. Pallone, be in touch. Or just go for it, and then let me know how it goes.

 

Which Celebrities Want to Fix Daylight Saving Time?

When I started this blog I was a lone voice in the wilderness, complaining about having to change the clocks. Not even my mom read all my posts.

But little by little, the audience has grown. Reporters started figuring out that I wasn’t just a crackpot, but that I could be helpful to them. (OK, I may still be a crackpot, but at least I am quotable and not wrong.)

Then legislators around the country and in D.C. figured out that I could be helpful to them, so they write me all the time these days, and I’m happy to help.

The weirdest part for me is now being in the company of celebrities.

Which ones?


Jon_Lovett-DST

Jon Lovett says he is a “one issue” voter regarding Daylight Saving Time

Well, first on the list has to be Jon Lovett, who talks about Daylight Saving Time all the time on his podcast, and has the most nuanced view of any of the celebrities I’ve seen opining on the topic. He did so again just today:

He then went on with a whole thread about his idea for a solution, which is so nuanced it can’t be contained in a single tweet. (That’s a good thing, says I.) It’s such a good solution that I hate to quibble with it, but his solution would create a bit of a patchwork around the country. I will be writing about that in my next post looking at the federal legislation out there.

Update: He did it again in this podcast, starting about 1 hour in.

I remember my heart leaping just a bit when Ben Stiller tweeted about this, AND used my hashtag:

I got to meet Nate Silver once. I told him thanks because back before fivethirtyeight.com was a household name, I knew about it and used his predictions to win some money in an office betting pool about an election. Without missing a beat he asked for a share of the winnings.

So, it makes me quite happy to see that he is part of Team #LockTheClock:

This is the celebrity I know the best because he was my boss back at the legendary Spy Magazine. I’ve never talked to Kurt Andersen about this, but of course he lands on an astute analysis:

Other celebs seem to just want the barbarism of clock changing to end. You get that feeling from Jimmy Kimmel who basically pleaded with Elizabeth Warren to #LockTheClock.

Update on the Spring Forward weekend: This is HUGE! The Dept. of Transportation does actually control the clocks, but they only do so at the direction of Congress, so we still do need to fix the law, but having Pete on our side should help a lot.

Craig Shoemaker to me is proof that just about everyone really hates this thing:

Neil deGrasse Tyson has been an advocate saying we should #LockTheClock for years:

Joseph Gordon-Levitt was so sleep deprived that his tweet wasn’t even funny, and he forgot that it’s “Daylight Saving” with no S on the end.

Celebrity author David Itzkoff captures the mood of the room well in this tweet:

Chef Ted Allen would like us to stop cooking the clocks:

Mindy Kaling might not be taking a policy position, but this one hit home:

Same goes for AOC — this tweet shows she knows it’s an issue:

I’d like to close with someone not famous — but a #LockTheClock hero in my book: George Moncure from Montana.

George is a retired guy who just wanted more daylight to play tennis with his friends. He talked to his state senator, got some bills going, handed out smart flyers, and moved the ball forward more than a lot of “influencers.” (Update, he did it!)

In the final analysis, what makes change? Nate Silver’s tweet or George’s tennis matches?

Whatever your level of celebrity — go for it. Take action. Be part of the winning side of history.

Thanks for reading, and be safe this weekend — especially Monday morning.

-Scott