I didn’t write about the election in Georgia before it happened, I just didn’t want to allow myself to think about it, and really it was a matter for the people of the Peach State.
But now that it is clear that both of the elections went to Democrats, and that the U.S. Senate will now have different leadership, I’m allowing myself to consider one other significant change:
The Senate Commerce Committee will now have new leadership. A new day is dawning.
As I’ve written about in the past, there was one guy who was holding up progress on fixing Daylight Saving Time more than any other one person: Sen. Roger Wicker, chairman of the Commerce Committee. Under the Senate rules, if he doesn’t want a bill to get a hearing, it doesn’t get a hearing.
(Colorado, by the way, has a much more democratic system. It requires that every bill introduced get at least one hearing. That system, however, can be abused, as it was against my bill last year.)
Well, with the new makeup of the Senate, the current ranking member, Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington State, is in line to become the new head of the committee. While I haven’t seen that she has taken a position on Daylight Saving Time, I do know the best predictor of if a U.S. Senator or Representative was willing to co-sponsor federal legislation was if the state they represented had passed a bill to #LockTheClock.
Washington is just such a state. Rep. Marcus Riccelli sponsored an excellent bill, which passed with wide, bipartisan majorities and became law in 2019.
So, Sen. Cantwell has every reason to at least give a hearing to a bill to fix Daylight Saving Time for good.
One small note about bipartisanship:
This last year has been rough, and it seems like an issue that honestly crosses party lines would be most welcome. How fantastic would it be if the advent of Democratic control of the Senate meant that a Republican-sponsored bill could get a hearing?
And further, how marvelous would it be if after the horrible year of 2020, we got to end the barbarism of Daylight Saving Time clock changing in 2021?
We have a lot of work to do, but I have more hope than I’ve had in any of the six years that I’ve been working on this issue.
Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. – Psalm 30:5
Here is the transcript of my testimony to the House State and Local Government Committee, which is considering a Joint Resolution.
Dear Chairman Wiggam, Ranking member Kelly, And members of the Ohio House State and Local Government Committee,
I am the leader of the international movement to #LockTheClock, also known as a guy and his blog.
For more than six years now I’ve been writing about this topic, but in the last couple of years the volume has turned way up, and I’ve now testified in a dozen states, been featured on the BBC, the New York Times and the Daily Show.
I’m very sorry I can’t be with you there today in person, and I look forward a post-Covid era when I can be there.
I could wax eloquently for hours about the evils of changing the clock twice a year. Just ask my wife, she’ll tell you this is true. But I’ve seen how this joint resolution sailed through the Ohio Senate, and I watched the sponsors introduce this bill and saw the positive overall reactions, so I don’t think there’s a need to do a lot of convincing.
Several questions did come up that I thought I might shed a bit more light on.
First was a question from Rep. Ginter, who first expressed huge support, and then asked: Why hasn’t this been done before?
The reason is this: Tied up in this issue are two questions.
1. Should we stop changing the clock twice a year. 2. What time zone should we land in.
The confusion about the second question is what ties up progress on the first.
That seems to be fading away now. When I first started blogging about this there was no action anywhere in the country. Then I put together a research page showing all the death, economic hardship and overall negative consequences that result from stealing an hour of sleep from the whole country one Sunday each Spring.
After that research started spreading, states started treating this like the serious public policy issue that it is, and not some quirky issue. We now have 15 states around the country that have passed something in the last two years. And federal bills have gotten more great bipartisan support than ever before.
As to the second question… That’s something that I think individual states should grapple with after the decision is made to Lock the Clock.
Rep. Becker brought up the temporary change that was made in 1974. That was a disaster. It was ordered by Pres. Nixon in the depths of Watergate, and instead of being planned for in advance it was put into place in January. Changing the clocks in the spring or fall is bad, changing the clocks in January is just torture. Congress got rid of that after one year. It was such a failed experiment that it is part of why we haven’t had a lot of progress on fixing this in the years since then. Now people in general are suggesting a much more phased in and science-based approach.
Rep. Wiggam brought up the fact that constituents really want to fix this, and he is exactly right about that. He also brought up studies about the health effects. Yes. There are a lot. Heart attacks, strokes, workplace accidents, traffic accidents, and just overall deaths climb in the days after the Spring Forward time change.
And thank you Rep. Wilkin for bringing some levity to the issue. There is a lot of that, and it’s why some of the best explanations of why we need to fix this are found in memes and funny videos. I collect those on my blog, and they are always the most popular pages I have each year.
This resolution is a great first step. The next step will be a bill. I’m happy to work with you in any ways that I can to help you take that next step in the coming months.
After the year we’ve all had in 2020, I gotta say I’m excited to be writing about 2021.
This post is available to all, of course, but is specifically written for state legislators, and staff. For the first time ever, you now have the wind at your back as you think about carrying or voting for a bill to fix Daylight Saving Time.
Indeed last year, before Covid hit, we saw a record number of bills and resolutions pass, and a bunch of others looked like they were on their way, but then… Well, you know what happened.
But this year, I think, we will see a real focus on legislation that actually helps real people. And after the difficult political year we’ve all just had, some honestly bipartisan solutions will be a breath of fresh air.
Fixing Daylight Saving Time fits both of those to a T — and the T stands for Time to #LockTheClock.
Much of this blog post is adapted from a presentation I recently made to legislators via the crack staff at the National Conference of State Legislators.
Here’s the slide deck:
I realize some of that won’t really make sense without my explanation, but I’ll try to do that here.
(This presentation came after an excellent slide deck and talk from Rep. Ray Ward of Utah, who is also a doctor. He spoke about the tortured history of DST, and the real world health dangers of clock changing. Rep. Ward included in his presentation this video from John Oliver about the history of DST. The history is so convoluted, that it seems only comedians do it justice… Here’s another DST explainer from The Daily Show with Trevor Noah featuring yours truly. And if you want to see a collection of research into why the clock changing is deadly, see this page of DST research.)
So, working from the (correct) assumption that fixing Daylight Saving Time is a good idea for public policy, health, and good governance, here are some considerations for you for the 2021 session:
Who will be for you, and against you?
With an unusual issue like this, you’ll have an unusual set of lobbyists working both for and against you.
Before we get to the lobbyists, however, let’s look at what the constituent response might be.
In general, people really hate clock changing. All the public polling I’ve seen is super clear on that, and a referendum in California passed by a huge margin.
The problem with most polling is that they ask questions like: Are you for or against Daylight Saving Time? An answer to that could mean almost anything.
Rep. Ward asked the question of his constituents that I wish some big pollster would ask: If we don’t change the clocks any more, which time should we go into permanently? The answer was more than 2-1 for staying in Permanent DST.
So… we know that constituents care, and we know that they prefer year-round DST. What about the lobbyists?
The most active lobbying I’ve seen when I’ve testified around the country is from the golf industry. They show up everywhere pushing the idea that more sunlight later in the day is great for golfers, especially students.
Other lobbyists have been spotted working more behind the scenes. This includes the television industry, especially broadcast sports. (They want it dark outside so people will go inside and sit on the couch and watch TV.)
Here’s how I broke it down in that presentation:
If you propose anything at all related to Daylight Saving Time, you should expect to get a great constituent response. Just mention it in your newsletter or on your Twitter feed or whatever, and be prepared for a much stronger response than any vote you might take on the budget, etc.
Also, you should do some press outreach, and you may or may not be surprised at the response you get. I was a reporter, and I dreaded getting pitched by legislators in general, but a story about Daylight Saving Time? Now there’s one that’s fun to write, that editors eat up, and that will get the most clicks of any other story on the day it comes out.
One other thing you’ll have going for you is… well… me. If the logistics work out I can come to your state and testify as I have all over the country. If I can testify remotely (something that seems way more possible in this Zoom-world we now live in) all the better. If you want, I can put you in touch with the sponsors of bills that I’ve testified for, and I think they’ll all tell you it helps elevate the conversation quite a bit.
Who will be against you, no matter what?
Really, there’s nobody that is in favor of keeping the twice-yearly time change. The whole thing with the farmers is bunk, and in fact farm lobbyists have started supporting bills that Lock The Clock. And while some school groups may have an opinion about what time zone your state should lock into, they are not automatically against any changes to DST.
So, you start out in a good place.
Permanent Standard Time
Now, if you want to introduce a bill to lock into Permanent Standard Time, the time we use in the winter…
I have always been clear that this blog doesn’t take an official position on the question of what time zone a state should go into permanently. There are legitimate differences from state to state.
So, if you want to propose having your state move to permanent Standard Time, I will support you and work to help you in any way I can.
That said, you should understand the dynamics you’ll be facing.
On your side most prominently is federal law. The way the law is written your state can move into permanent Standard Time right now. Just pass a bill, get it signed by the governor and send it to the federal Department of Transportation, and it’s done. That’s what Arizona and Hawaii did back in the 1960s.
Also on your side will be a certain very vocal and organized subset of sleep researchers. In the last year this group has suddenly (and somewhat mysteriously) become very active, and has been sending researchers out to testify for or against bills. If you propose permanent Standard Time, they’ll testify on your behalf, and sound super authoritative while doing so.
Working against you, however, will be any number of lobbyists. The golf industry really does make a lot of extra money for every extra month of Daylight Saving Time, so they will work hard to kill your bill.
I haven’t seen as much active opposition from other interested groups, like outdoor cooking, retailers, public health advocates like the heart and stroke associations, depression and mental health advocates, etc., but I do know that their awareness on this issue is growing, and their interest in actually working against your bill may be growing along with their heightened awareness.
Permanent Daylight Saving Time
If you think the best thing for your state is to move to permanent Daylight Saving Time, here’s what you have going for you:
First, of course, is that most of your constituents want this. That alone is pretty strong, and if you want to pack a hearing room, just send out a newsletter and tell them this bill is happening, and people will show up.
And then you’ll have the inverse of the situation above. You’ll have someone from a sleep research group show up to talk about the chronic problems with the sun coming up later relative to the clock. They will do this no matter how far east you are in your time zone.
Also, the TV people may lurk in the shadows and work to kill your bill without leaving any fingerprints.
(If you are in Colorado, my home state, you are doomed. Or at least, you had been in the past. Maybe things are changing?)
And you will also have to deal with the federal law, which is the perfect segue to talk about what’s going to happen this year in Washington.
Federal DST action
I’m writing this post in November, and it now looks like we will probably continue with what we had before: a Democratic House and a Republican Senate.
Daylight Saving Time is now, always has been, and always will be a totally bipartisan issue, so that’s fine, with one exception: The chairmanship of the Senate Commerce Committee will likely stay the same.
That chairman, Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, has yet to allow a DST bill to even get a hearing. He could kill the bill in the committee, but that would be more work than just not even letting the bill get a hearing in the first place.
If Democrats do get control of the Senate, the chair of the Commerce Committee will likely become Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington State. This is great news because Washington State’s legislature passed a strong Permanent DST bill, and in general U.S. Senators like to represent their constituents as signified by movement from the state legislature. (It was almost immediately after Florida passed its groundbreaking bill in 2018 that Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida introduced a bill to put the whole country into permanent DST.)
But there is good news. One new member of the U.S. House is Jay Obernolte, who has been a longtime advocate for fixing DST in the California legislature. He can join with his fellow Californian Rep. Ro Khanna, who has publicly been a big supporter of fixing DST.
Also good news is that Mississippi, where Sen. Wicker is from, had eight different DST bills last session, but as in so many states, they all essentially died when the legislature went home because of Covid in March. If Mississippi can pass a bill this year, maybe that will get the attention of Sen. Wicker and he’ll let a bill get a hearing.
If not, we’ll just have to assume that he’s in the pocket of the TV industry, and I just refuse to believe that.
How to actually pass something
Here’s the last slide I’ll leave you with in this post:
What I’ve learned from watching all the bills that pass, and that don’t pass, is summed up on that slide.
Go regional. If you make your bill dependent on other states around you, you’ll have an easier time passing a bill. It makes sense: It’s a lower risk vote, and it shows the regional nature of the topic.
Go for permanent DST. In a handful of states like Indiana, Kentucky, Nebraska, Idaho and perhaps a couple of others for regional reasons, permanent Standard Time may make more sense, but for nearly all of the others you are just going to get too much opposition from lobbyists and constituents to get a bill signed.
Pass a resolution. Sure, it doesn’t have the force of law, but it will be a great signal to your federal delegation that they should get on board of a federal solution that allows you to Lock The Clock.
Run a referendum. If your state allows it, you could ask the people of your state which time zone they want to lock into. The background of this idea is here, and the actual text from Legislative Council is here.
Ask for a study. This is what Massachusetts did and New York probably would have done had Covid not hit. (By the way, a study in your state is probably going to show the same thing that the Massachusetts’ study showed: moving to permanent DST is the best solution.)
Thank you very much for your service to your district and your state and your country, and the fact that you are interested in this topic shows that you are interested in being a real servant to your constituents.
Please be in touch and let me know how I can be helpful to you.
Jon Lovett has been tweeting, podcasting, and probably yelling out of his window about fixing Daylight Saving Time.
But he doesn’t have a blog, so when people search for “Jon Lovett daylight saving time” they see my post from last year near the top of the results. (I have been getting a ton of traffic directly to that page, and that’s why I looked.)
We both recently used the same map to help make our point. He used it in a tweet, and I used it in a webinar hosted by the National Conference of Sate Legislatures.
We both made the same basic point… Anyone who says they have one solution that will work for every state in every time zone just is not paying attention.
It is something like remarkable how much Jon has pushed this issue forward in the midst of this election, which is a bit overwhelming for nearly everyone. I know it is for me, and I’m not a founder of a really important voting initiative.
He is raising the profile a lot, and I think that will really help. He is also sensible enough to accept help from people he disagrees with a lot, people like Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida who like Jon has been pushing for an end to DST clock changing.
I know he will be OK with that because he just wants to see this thing fixed. If a Republican gets a little credit, fine.
And as I wrote about last year, Jon is really close to having the exact right solution.
What is that?
It is always important to remember that there are two questions:
Should we #LockTheClock and stop changing into and out of DST?
What time zone should we lock into?
Jon’s solution at the moment is that we should let states decide both questions.
Well you should know Josh for this reason my official policy position is that we should amend the law not to dictate an outcome but give states an option for permanent daylight saving time along with current options of permanent standard and the switch. https://t.co/PZkVp97GPi
This is consistent with the (now dead) House Bill, and it makes sense… until you dive into it.
Here are the problems with that approach:
It would lead to the kind of patchwork of states with different times. This is a legitimate problem, and would bring opposition from the transportation industry. (This is why Congress passed the Uniform Time Act of 1966. They wanted the time to be uniform.)
Related, it would give the states the easy temptation to change relatively often, leading to even more confusion.
While it recognizes the reality of states being located on different sides of a time zone, it does not set a method for the states to work together as a region.
That’s why I really want to get through to Jon (maybe after the election) and work with him to advocate the other solution. Last year I called it the European solution, but it turns out even Europe doesn’t have it right.
But it is still the right way to go. Here is the plan:
Congress says: No more clock changing starting in, say, 2022.
States have until then to work out which zones they want to be in.
If they do nothing, they go into Permanent DST.
That is the whole plan, and gives plenty of time for everyone to work everything out, make regional agreements, etc.
The one legitimate downside to this plan before Covid-19 was that it would also force school districts to adjust their schedules. Getting schools to adjust schedules before Covid would have been hard, but I think my son’s school has adjusted its schedule 27 times since September. Before the school bell schedule was etched in granite, now it’s Gumby.
So, Jon, get some sleep, and after the election maybe watch my appearance on the Daily Show, and then one of my legislative testimonies so you know that I am not a kook, and then let’s talk.
I love this clip from The West Wing. it was made before Indiana unified under one time zone, but it is still great. Also, the earnest, lovable Midwestern kid is played by the same actor who played the earnest, lovable Midwestern news producer in Sorkin’s show, the Newsroom.
When I first started fighting to #LockTheClock six years ago, I knew that clock changing was annoying. I have come to learn that it’s also deadly, and we have lots of stats about that on the research page. Then came the day I went to testify in Nebraska, and the young man who testified before me made a statement that was so clear and powerful about how clock changing is hugely exacerbating for his seizure disorder. If a person dies or ends up in the ER, that’s bad. Also bad, but harder to quantify, is the disruption for families like the Fausett family from Nebraska, or the family that you’ll read about below. The writer of this post came to my attention because she contacted her state legislator, and the staff for that legislator then contacted me. When I heard this story, I thought it would be much better to get the story on this blog first-hand, and boy I was right about that. (The photos are from the mom, art creations from her kids.) I hope you find it as moving and touching as I do, and I will keep this family — and all other families that deal with special issues like this — in mind as I fight to finally, once and for ever, put an end to the barbarism of clock changing.
— Scott
Hi there. My name is Amy. My children both have the diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder, in addition to many other special needs. Life is challenging, and we spend hours every week in therapy and with specialists trying to support my children with their disability. My children require routines and schedules to navigate the world. The routines help them to stay regulated and in control of their emotions and bodies.
Daylight Saving Time (both when it starts in the spring and ends in the fall) is an incredibly challenging time for my family. The impact of arbitrarily changing the time twice a year is disruptive, dysregulating, and presents real safety concerns for my family. While others might find the practice of DST merely annoying or unimportant, to my family it is dangerous.
Let me ask you to think back to the Monday after Daylight Saving Time began in March. How were you feeling that morning? Maybe a little tired because it felt like you lost an hour of sleep? Maybe you wondered why it still felt so dark when it was time for your morning commute? Maybe when you ran out for your coffee you were surprised by how different the quality of the light was? Maybe you were surprised that you didn’t feel as sleepy as you usually do when it was time to turn in?
My children were extremely dysregulated that morning. There were tears, there was screaming, there was aggression, both physical and verbal towards me. I think we can all agree that resetting the body’s sleep pattern is not as easy as resetting a clock. At my house, we try valiantly twice a year to ease the transition, but bodies have their own internal clock. My son could not articulate why he felt so sleepy and off that Monday. This caused my son real physical and emotional stress–the fallout of which is termed a meltdown. For the rest of the day, he was stressed out and felt as if the world was not quite right. For all of us there are little reminders throughout the days after DST begins or ends that we switched the clock—we forget to reset a digital clock on the oven, we aren’t as hungry for our meals, the shadows are a little shorter. For most of us this is no big deal. We know why everything is a little different, and we adjust to the differences pretty quickly. For my children, this is incredibly upsetting and stressful. Nothing feels right to them. They don’t understand why they had to wake up early. They don’t understand why it feels as if their therapists are an hour late in arriving, and they don’t understand the explanations of DST.
For my children, adjusting to the new time takes three weeks to one month. Imagine missed naps, refusal to sleep at bedtime, and groggy mornings for a month! And that’s just their disrupted sleep pattern.
But my children don’t process the world the same way most of us do. The sensory input is far more overwhelming to them and can very easily dysregulate them—leading them to at times shut down and withdraw or at other times to meltdown and tantrum. We’ve all experienced days where little irritations can accumulate and build up until one last straw sets us off. This happens often with my children; however, they have more limited language and more limited social tools to understand how to deal with their emotion. So they meltdown. Aggression towards themselves, their peers, or an adult like me is often part of that meltdown. This is what I mean when I say that DST poses real safety risks to my family. It creates for weeks these situations where my children feel as if things are off, in addition to messing with their sleep, and rather than being able to talk and process this, it builds until there is a meltdown. My children have a hard enough time coping with everyday life, but because we want time to “spring forward” or “fall back” we have to make everything harder for them. Adjusting is hard when you have Autism. The meltdowns that my children experience are not choices. My kids are not naughty, spoiled, or bratty children who are tantruming to get their way. They are special kids, who see and experience the world differently and deserve our help.
So let’s go back to that Monday in March. My son had a meltdown, but for the rest of the day his fight or flight instincts were activated. His stress level, already elevated, continued to build until a sensory stimulus (a car passing by too fast as we were out for a walk, a food that is the wrong shape or color, a smell that is too strong) pushed him over the edge. Then another meltdown happened.
Unfortunately, meltdowns can grow in their duration and severity.
Have you ever had to physically restrain a child for their safety or your own? I have during my son’s meltdowns. Have you needed to be trained and certified in how to physically restrain a child in crisis? I have. And while aggression towards self or others is not always a hallmark of a meltdown (although it is certainly a hallmark of my son’s), it is very common. Also common is property destruction, elopement, verbal aggression, and vocal disruption.
These are sobering experiences, and they motivate me and other parents like me to look for patterns and anticipate situations that could lead to meltdowns. Arbitrarily changing my children’s routines and throwing them off twice every year for DST leads to a whole lot of meltdowns which results in increased incidents of aggression. Daylight Saving Time isn’t worth it, y’all. But helping my children out and other children like them is worth it. I love my children. They are wonderful, intelligent, creative people who see the world in cool and unique ways. They are working hard to learn how to use language and calming strategies to stay regulated and stay in control of their emotions and bodies. We can help them and by locking the clocks and ending the practice of Daylight Saving Time.
My job as a parent of disabled kiddos is to advocate for their special needs. Before you dismiss the movement to #locktheclock as unimportant, consider how the practice is not only really challenging but dangerous for my family and other special needs families.
It’s been six years now that I’ve been following Daylight Saving Time news, and at least a couple that I’ve been paying attention to what’s going on in Europe with a fix for what they call Summertime and Wintertime.
I do not claim to be any kind of expert in the intricacies of European politics, but I was encouraged by news. And now I have to admit that I just got it wrong.
The stories I read made it seem that the E.U. made a decision in 2019 that there would be no more clock changing starting in 2021, and that each country had until then to decide what time zone it would be in permanently.
So as we go into this weekend for the “Fall Back” change in Europe, I went searching for what I was sure to be a raft of stories about what decision each country is making.
Nothing, really.
There was so little coverage, that I actually had to go look on some German-language sites and use Google Translate to figure out what was going on.
It turns out I had one small key piece of the puzzle wrong.
The EU didn’t say to countries that they had to pick, it said that they should pick one time zone and stick with it.
So a lot of the countries started talking about it, but they all wanted to be in synch with other neighboring countries, and all are now waiting for someone to make the first move and so the conversation went about like this classic scene from Jungle Book:
With no clear leadership, the idea has just kind of languished. So, alas, it looks like there will be no #LockTheClock anytime soon in the E.U.
As a side note, the U.S and the E.U., will also remain out of step with each other, as Europe changes clocks a week before America in the fall, and several weeks later in the spring, leading to this kind of mess:
This is all really a shame because I have been touting this brilliant European solution for us in America. It makes sense here.
The federal government could say: In two years (or less, based on when the law is enacted) there will be no more clock changing. If you are on the border of a time zone line, you have until then to figure out if you want to be in permanent Standard Time like we have in the winter, or permanent Daylight Saving Time like we have in the summer. If you do nothing, you will be in permanent Daylight Saving Time.
Why the bias toward permanent DST? Just political reality. There are so many business interests aligned behind keeping more sunlight later in the day that there’s no sense fighting them. Also, there have been nearly 20 states that have passed a bill through their legislature in the last two years, and every single one of them has been a move to stay in DST year round.
Right now, under the law, any state could move into permanent Standard Time right now, and not a single state has done that since Arizona did it in the 1960s.
That’s not to say it couldn’t happen.
I recently made a presentation to the National Conference of State Legislatures, and included these two maps:
My point was to show that it is maybe a little bit nutso that Indiana is in the same time zone as Boston, and is in a different time zone from Chicago.
Facing a situation where the sun wouldn’t come up until 9 a.m. for a few days in the winter, Indiana may make the decision to switch to Central Time permanently. That would be the same as what they have right now for the Standard Time part of the year.
Who should decide that? Me? Some research group? The Federal Government?
No, no and no.
The people of the great state of Indiana, via the established form of government known as the state legislature, should decide. The golf industry, et. al., may make a case that they need the sunlight in the summer, but it will be a hard case to make. The state is so far west in the time zone that there’s plenty of light to go around in the summer.
I’m the first to concede, this answer is a bit complex. Sorry about that. If there was an easy solution, we would have done it already.
Covid is still the main issue that our government needs to deal with, and the elections in the U.S. truly are historic and important.
But visits to my site, emails, and general interest in this issue are rising in the ways they do every year about this time. (It’s true, a lot of people are just looking for Daylight Saving Time memes, and I’ll be sure to make a post with those soon enough.)
And the state legislators are starting to think about what bills they are going to introduce in the coming sessions. Federal lawmakers are plotting how to get something done in what may be a new-look Washington.
My hope is that even though the European solution has not yet actually worked for Europe, with one small tweak it could work here.
That’s what I’ll be pushing for, and I hope you’ll join me.
I’ve been thinking some about history of late, in part because of the historical connection between DST and a global pandemic. But also in part because I think the clock changing really will be going away soon. (“Soon” in historical terms, that is; soon when you think how it has been around for 100 years. Not “soon” meaning this year, alas.)
One of the key figures in the world of standardized time is William Frederick Allen, who was perhaps the person more responsible than any other for the fact that we got standardized time zones.
He worked for the railroads, and train travel was made more difficult because each town kept its own time. To make it less confusing (!) the railroads kept their own time, but there were more than 50 railroads, so…
Allen decided we needed standardized time zones, so he went to work.
Now, I know this is just a hobby for me. I’ve never made a nickel doing it, and fixing the time zones was Allen’s job.
Still, it is a bit humbling to see that the New York Public Library has six boxes and one package of writings from Allen. That’s just what they collected, just the important stuff. And it’s just his work on standardized time, not his personal correspondence. Six boxes!
I just went and looked, and this will be my 83rd post on this blog. That sounds like a lot in some ways, but it sure wouldn’t fill up six boxes. And when you realize that I’ve written 83 posts over more than six years, that works out to about a post a month. Quoting Tom Wolfe, that is “not exactly [a] staggering literary output.”
If you add in all the emails that I have exchanged with state legislators, USDOT lawyers, and congressional staffers… It still wouldn’t fill up a box.
Mr. Allen didn’t have social media. He didn’t have TV, so I guess that helped. It must have taken him a while to shave just his chin so nicely, but still, the guy was dogged in working to get the clocks working the way that made sense to him, and soon would to the rest of the world.
All that work did pay off, though, and we now live in a world he imagined, where the “top of the hour” comes at the same time for everyone in the world, except for a few dare-to-be-different areas of India, Newfoundland where they are a half-hour off Universal Coordinated Time. (Nepal is 45 minutes different. Must be the thin air up there.)
And what did this time pioneer think about changing the clocks twice per year? Well, I can’t find a record of if he did say anything about it. The concept was bouncing around in his later years, but blessedly for him was not enacted during his life. He died in 1915, just a couple of years before WWI and the start of the clock-changing.
And finally, what will our place in DST history be? What will people say about me, and you, and all the other followers of this blog, the twitter account, the FB page, and all those who have created DST memes and all the rest?
I hope they will say that we cared about the right things — that once we realized that changing clocks was killing people, that we tried to do something about it. I hope they will say that we did our best.
But I bet what really happens is that we are all… forgotten.
And that will be OK.
Right now people think about the #LockTheClock movement twice per year when the clocks change. Again.
In the future, they won’t be thinking about it because the clocks won’t change. They will just go to work on that Monday after the Spring Forward time change, and they won’t get in an accident. They won’t have a heart attack. They won’t have a stroke. They won’t be mad because they changed all the clocks in the house but forgot about the one in the car.
They will just live their lives and forget about all of this, and that will be OK with me.
Addendum: The Yates Connection
While writing this post, I found that the New York Public Library has a way to contact the staff to ask to see certain documents. With COVID, you can’t go in, so I asked if they could just snap a picture of a couple of pages and send them to me.
The pages I wanted in particular were from letters sent between William Allen and a man named W. H. Yates. From what I can glean about W. H. Yates, we are not related, alas.
But we are related in that he was a bit of a kook!
Unsolicited, he wrote to Mr. Allen a note that is very much like the notes I get quite often. He suggested that when they standardize time, they also throw out the notion of 24 hours a day, and switch to 10 hours a day, and 10 time zones around the world!
“We have a decimal coinage, let us have a decimal day…” he wrote at the start of a three-page letter explaining how it could all work.
The idea would have been tough to put in place, even in those days when there might have only been one or two clocks in a town. Standardizing the time just meant setting the existing clocks to a different relative time; changing to a 10-hour day would mean everyone would have to use new clocks.
If Mr. Allen considered the idea at all, it wasn’t seriously. It took him three months to write the guy back, and after apologizing for the delay wrote:
The system proposed may possibly be adopted at some time or other for scientific purposes, but I doubt if it will ever be practically applied and that there would be much advantage, if any, over the system recently adopted.
Wow. Harsh.
I have to say, I really enjoyed seeing this as I get letters all the time from people telling me how I should fix the time, without ever really considering that I’m just a guy with a blog. Even the Daily Show called me a “Time Wizard.”
So in a sense while I share a name with the kook, I share the particular joy over the centuries of being a fellow Time Wizard with Mr. William Allen.
Thanks so much to the crackerjack staff of the NYPL. Here is a link and the official bit of credit they asked me to include:
William Frederick Allen papers. Manuscripts and Archives Division. The New York Public Library. Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.
Just a quick post to say that this topic is on the back burner, just for a bit. Like the rest of the world, I hope that soon we have adequate testing and that we can get back to life that will be a new normal.
For years I’ve gotten emails, tweets and general complaints that this issue just is not all that important. Legislators get that all the time on this, and really on just about any issue: Why are you working on this when you could be working on [insert pet issue here]?
But now even I say that Daylight Saving Time is an issue that can wait. Once we no longer all need to shelter in place, we can pick things back up.
Also there’s just not as much to report about. Like everything else, state legislatures have suspended meeting. And the federal efforts are stuck because nothing non-Covid-19 related is happening.
I was hoping that this year we’d get to 20 states that have passed something. We had three states pass something before the crisis hit: South Carolina, Ohio and Utah, (which passed a bill this year after passing a resolution last year.)
Then just as the legislatures started adjourning, Wyoming passed its bill, and from a socially distant desk, the governor of Wyoming signed the bill into law with little fanfare this week. The sponsor of the bill contacted me when it was signed, and we celebrated electronically. I was personally bummed because Wyoming is close enough that I could have easily made it for a bill-signing ceremony, but there was no ceremony. There are far bigger tragedies associated with COVID, but still…
So, I will continue to monitor the news, but not a lot else. With luck by the time the Fall Back change comes in November, as a society we will have enough capacity to handle recovery AND fixing the clocks.
It’s not that it wasn’t going well. It was great. It grew really quickly, and even inspired a copycat effort from a troll, so we’ll call that flattery.
But after it got going, a couple of things happened.
I had some people tell me they signed and donated, and they were glad that I could get some money to help in the cause. The problem is that I didn’t ask for money. The petition site did. I’m sure this was all in the Terms of Service, etc., but it felt really spammy and gross, and I didn’t want anyone else getting fooled, so I shut it down.
COVID-19. I have written before about the kind of “whataboutism” that leads to nothing getting done on anything, but the Coronavirus has escalated rapidly in every way, and it just seems intrusive to be pushing this issue at this moment.
I actually did make some progress on one of the goals of the petition, which was to get this on the radar of a certain senator and a certain committee in Washington.
I can’t say too much more about the last bit just yet, but I am hopeful for some good news that I’ll be able to report soon. When I can announce it, I will do it here, or on my twitter feed, first.
So, to those of you who did sign, thanks! And if you donated, thanks even more. I didn’t get the money, but that’s probably a big part of why it went so well.
And I hope that you’ve all now adjusted to having an hour of sleep yanked away from you. Things will quiet down now a bit on this blog, but you can rest assured that I’ll be working for you in public, and behind the scenes, until the government stops making us change the clock twice a year.
This is the sixth year I have been blogging about this, and in all that time I have never really asked you, the reader, for anything.
I have never, not one time, asked anyone for money for this cause.
I’ve never sold any “merch” as the kids like to call it.
There are no pop-ups begging you to join my email list. (I only added an email list last year, and have only sent, I think, three emails. If you would like to, you can sign up here.)
Just yesterday, however, I decided to do something that I have openly mocked in the past, and that is to start a petition.
I have seen dozens of these things, and they have all done the same amount of good: Zilch.
But people like signing them because it feels like you are doing something.
Well, I decided to merge that desire that people have to do something with a petition that might actually make a dent.
You see, right now there is one person who is blocking progress on #LockTheClock.
That is Sen. Roger Wicker from the great state of Mississippi. He is also the chairman of the Commerce Committee in the U.S. Senate.
For reasons that only historians can love, all of the clock management happens through the Department of Transportation, and that department fall under the purview of the Commerce Committee.
Right now there is a bill in front of that committee called the Sunshine Protection Act. It has not yet gotten a hearing.
Now when I was a kid and I learned how a bill became a law, I never imagined that a bill could get introduced and then NOT get a hearing. I mean, if a senator cares enough to officially submit a bill, it seems like a committee should have to at least look at it. If it loses a vote, fine, but it should be able to get a vote, right?
Well, that is not how it works. It turns out that a bill only gets a hearing when the chair of the committee says it gets a hearing.
That’s where the act is sitting right now, waiting for a hearing.
Now, I don’t think that Sen. Wicker is actually against this idea. I mean, consider:
He is a Republican, but the bill is sponsored by another Republican, Sen. Marco Rubio.
He is from Mississippi, but a co-sponsor of the bill is the other senator from Mississippi, Sen. Hyde-Smith.
He can’t be thinking that people hate it because so many states are now specifically asking for it, and polls are always really clear that people hate the clock-changing.
He served in the Mississippi legislature, which now has nine different bills basically all in line with the Sunshine Protection Act.
I think he just doesn’t know about it.
So, I want to help him learn about it. Hence the petition. I will personally deliver all these signature to him, his staff and anyone else that might help him to decide to give this bill a hearing.
That is why for the first time I am genuinely asking you to do one thing that will not take much time, and add your name to this petition:
One small note: That petition is hosted on change.org. A thing I didn’t know when I put the petition there is that change.org asks for money after you sign. You do NOT need to give money. That all goes to change.org, which is actually a for-profit company. You can if you want, but don’t think the money comes to me. As always, I am not asking for donations.
Thanks for reading, and thanks especially for signing that, and then sharing it with everyone you know. With this one thing, maybe we can get this bill a hearing, and the voice of the sleep deprived around the country will finally be heard.
With apologies to Gabriel García Márquez, here in the busiest weekend of the #LockTheClock movement, I want to address something I am seeing a lot right now.
In short, I call it: Whataboutism.
The argument is always something like:
Really, with (insert issue here) going on, you think this is the most important thing you can do?
I get it. Even though I am the leader of the #LockTheClock movement, and even though I have probably spent more time working on this issue than anyone over the last six years, I understand that it is not the most important thing in the world.
Like everyone else, I find myself transfixed by a lot of the COVID-19 coverage.
But other than washing my hands for at least 20 seconds every time I come home, it doesn’t seem like there is a heck of a lot I can do about that.
On Daylight Saving Time, there is something I can do. I can continue to write here. I can talk to more legislators and staff. I can tweet and I can keep reading all the studies and then I can do all of that some more.
It doesn’t take anything away from COVID science to say that the science on the Spring Forward clock changing is really clear. A study just came out recently that directly attributes an additional 28 traffic deaths per year to a sleep-deprived and groggy populous in the days after the Spring Forward DST change.
And for every death there are countless other accidents and heart attacks. The research could not be any more clear.
Look, if DST clock changing doesn’t bother you, just consider yourself lucky. But don’t get mad at others because they are working on it, and don’t think just because politicians are working on this, that they aren’t also working on lots of other issues.
The sun is going to keep coming up, no matter what we do. But the way that we agree to run the clocks, that is up to us. Here on the weekend of the deadly time change, how about we agree to do what we can to fix that, or at least not be so critical of others who are trying to make a difference?
I’ve been working with state and federal lawmakers and staffs for years now, and often testify when it works out with my schedule and frequent flier miles.
There’s a hearing tomorrow in Maryland that I would love to be at, but I have a small cold with a cough, and given the Coronavirus fears, I’m worried that the other passengers on the plane might toss me out the emergency exit door somewhere over Ohio.
So, here’s a version of the testimony that I would have given.
If you live in a state that has a pending bill, I recommend that you go and testify if you want to see an end to the clock-changing insanity.
To do that, just find the bill on this page, and then look for the lead sponsor. Contact that person, and tell them that you want to testify.
When you get to the statehouse on the day of the hearing, there will probably be some kind of sign-up form. Find that to make sure they call on you.
Then when it is your turn, you can either speak from the heart, or read prepared testimony. I typically write something, but then just end up speaking without the notes. Writing it beforehand just helps me make sure I’m going to get all my points in.
Sometimes the sessions are recorded, sometimes not. If you do it, be sure to get someone to take your picture. You’ll want that later for sure. (You can send it to me and I’ll tweet about it from my #LockTheClock account or write about it on this blog.)
To help, there are some videos of a couple of the times I’ve testified on my videos page.
If you can, ask the sponsor to sit next to you, so that if there are questions about the legislative process, or whatever, you can defer to the lawmaker. That’s what I did recently in Atlanta:
And then just speak as clearly as you can, and make sure the mic is turned on.
If I was in Maryland tomorrow, this is more or less what I’d say:
Dear members of the Education, Health, and Environmental Affairs committee,
My name is Scott Yates. I’m the leader of the international movement known as #LockTheClock, but really I am just a citizen with a blog. There’s no foundation or institute or whatever. It’s just me.
Six years ago I started writing a blog because changing the clocks just annoyed me. Rather than complain about it, my wife challenged me to do something about it.
At first, I didn’t do much, I just wrote blog posts. But then I started reading the academic research about what happens when we change the clocks.
These studies were alarming. Heart attacks go up. Strokes. Traffic accidents. Workplace accidents.
I collected that research, and put it on a page on my blog. That collection of research then lead to legislators contacting me, and journalists around the world asking me to help them understand this issue.
You see, this was once viewed as a quirky, almost meaningless issue. The clocks are the clocks, and certainly somebody somewhere has a reason why they are this way.
It turns out that there is no good reason for changing the clocks. The history is a painful collection of diversions from other issues.
In short, the farmers are not the reason for Daylight Saving Time, and in fact the farmers have always been against the clock changing.
We do it now, really, only because we’ve always done it. The reasons are lost to the mists of history.
The thing that we know now that we didn’t fully understand when the Uniform Time Act of 1966 was signed into law was that the actual changing of the clocks is deadly. The most recent study issued just on the single issue of traffic safety says that 28 deaths per year are directly attributable to the Spring Forward time change. That’s on top of all the other deaths from heart attacks and more.
This is no longer a quirky issue, it is a legitimate public policy health issue. If a toaster came out that killed or injured hundreds of people every year, how fast would the government take action?
In short: The Government is in charge of the clocks. The clocks are killing people. It’s time to Lock The Clock.
Now, your next question may be: What good does this bill do? We need the federal government to take action.
I can tell you that every time a state bill passes, I let the sponsors of the two main bills in front of Congress know, and they are very interested for the news. And they use that information.
For instance, Sen. Marco Rubio has a bill to #LockTheClock. His co-sponsors include Senator Patty Murray of Washington State. She signed up immediately after the Washington state legislature passed a bill to put Washington State into permanent Daylight Saving Time.
So will this bill in front of you today actually fix the clocks for the people of Maryland, or will it just be a signal to the U.S. Congress? I don’t know, but either way, it is progress in the right direction.
There is no partisan angle to this bill at all. There is only good government. In these fraught times, the citizens are looking to our leaders to actually do something to show that government can actually work on behalf of the people. This is just the thing that you can do today that will make things better for real people.
Thank you very much, and I’m happy to answer any questions you might have.
State legislatures in the U.S. are an amazing part of our democracy. They vary a lot, and in many ways take on the personality of the states they are in.
As a whole, I find them to be far less dysfunctional than the U.S. Congress.
In part because most of them are limited in time, and March 1 is more or less the halfway point for many of the legislative sessions.
So, how are we doing in 2020?
Great!
Just as a recap, I have been following this stuff for six years now. For the first four years I watched as dozens of bills died. In 2017 Massachusetts passed a bill calling for a study, so that was a glimmer of progress.
Then in 2018 Florida actually passed a bill, on the heels of California voters passing a proposition that had been proposed by the legislature.
Then in 2019 another seven states passed some sort of bill. I listed them all on this page.
How many bills will pass this year? My prediction, and my hope, is that nine states will pass something. Then when you toss in Arizona and Hawaii, where the clock is already locked, we will have 20 states in 2020 that have taken action to end the insanity of Daylight Saving Time switching.
Here’s a look at progress here in 2020:
South Carolina
The first state to get something all the way through the process in 2020 is the Palmetto State, where the governor signed a bill into law on February 3rd!
The law mirrors Florida’s law, saying that as soon as the Feds allow it, they want to go into Permanent Daylight Saving Time.
Georgia
The difference between a bill and a law, I’ve found, is often the energy and grit of the sponsor. In Georgia, voters are well represented by Wes Cantrell, who has three bills percolating. I testified there on one of the bills, but I support all three of them.
My bet is that the one that will get signed is the one that will match the laws in Florida and South Carolina, creating a solid block in the southeastern part of the U.S.
Maryland
There’s a hearing this Thursday in Maryland, which may be extra helpful because it will get some headlines in the state many of the lawmakers and staff members in Washington D.C. actually live in.
The proposed bill there is great. It is more like the bills from the South, which just call for Maryland to move to Permanent DST, than the bills from north of Maryland, which often call for moving to DST but only if all the surrounding states do that, too.
As with all the other states, the legal impact of passing something won’t be huge, but the message it sends to congress will be gigantic.
Wyoming
Again here, a hard-working and persistent sponsor makes all the difference. I was honored to come to Wyoming and testify on behalf of Dan Laursen. His bill last year fell one vote short, but this year it looks like it may make it across the finish line.
Illinois
There is a lot of action in Illinois. This could be huge, because if California, Florida, Texas and Massachusetts have all taken action, it will look like New York State is being left out of the conversation among the most populous states. And if New York comes over to the light side, well, that’s the ball game.
Michigan
I had a delightful time testifying in Michigan a couple of years ago, and then I submitted written testimony last year.
When I testified, the proposal was to move the state into Permanent Daylight Saving Time. I pointed out that they might want to consider Permanent Standard Time for two reasons:
Michigan is so far north that the days are very short in the winter and long in the summer so even in Standard Time citizens there would get the sunsets that much of the rest of the country gets in Daylight time, and,
Because four counties on the western edge of the Upper Peninsula are in the Central Time Zone, there could be some weird discrepancies in time in that little zone. Going to Permanent Standard Time would allow them to unify the state.
The bill didn’t change when I was there, but the current bill under consideration does just that.
I’m often falsely accused of advocating for Permanent Daylight Saving Time for all. What I actually think is that we should all #LockTheClock and then the states that are on the border of a time zone should decide what time zone works best for that state. Michigan is a classic example where moving to permanent Standard Time makes sense.
Utah
A real champion of fixing Daylight Saving Time is Rep. Ray Ward of Utah, who is also a medical doctor. We were on a panel together hosted by the National Conference of State Legislatures, and then we got to have dinner together after at the airport on the way home.
In 2019, he was able to get a resolution signed in Utah, which is a nice symbolic step forward, but doesn’t have the force of law.
It follows the cooperative model. Before Utah can #LockTheClock, the feds need to fix the law AND other surrounding states need to pass similar laws.
That is another important step forward.
Mississippi
There are six different bills working their way down the great Mississippi legislative process.
I’m watching these closely and working with the sponsors as much as possible for one key reason: The one person in the world doing more to stop progress on #LockTheClock right now is from there.
You see, U.S. Senator Roger Wicker, a former senator in the Mississippi State Senate, is now a U.S. Senator, and is the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee. Why does that matter? That’s the committee where the Sunshine Act is now stuck, not getting a hearing.
Why is that?
Nobody seems to know.
But my hope and goal is that if the Mississippi legislature—the same body in which he once served—takes action that he won’t be able to help but notice and he will release his stranglehold on the federal bill.
Other states
I could say something about many of the 30-odd states working on this, but this is probably enough for today. Suffice it to say that things are moving, and the states that decide to wait on this are the ones that will be left out of the conversation.
If you are a state legislator and you worry your bill is stalling, or you just want to talk through strategies that will help you get something passed and signed, be in touch. I’m happy to talk.
While the headline, and indeed much of the writing, is obtuse and clouded in the dry vernacular of medical research, the impact of that article was massive.
You see, in short what that article said was that sugar wasn’t really as much of a health worry as previously thought. It’s fat in foods that is really the danger.
And that one notion — fat, not sugar, is bad for you — spread throughout society, reaching into government, agriculture, popular culture, and the dining habits of people around the world. Consider:
The lead author of that article went on to work at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and helped create the governments dietary guidelines that emphasized reducing the intake of fat.
High Fructose Corn Syrup, first produced only 10 years earlier, ballooned in use until the average American was eating 37.5 pounds of it per year by 1999.
The doctrine of “low fat” pervaded nearly all of the discussion about food, and yet Americans kept having more and more chronic health problems related to obesity.
It took 50 years for the general public to learn that the very prestigious and influential article in the very prestigious and influential journal was a part of a massive and insidious PR effort by… the sugar industry.
It was those who made money selling sugar that realized that sugar was really bad for people, and it would be bad for business if too much was made of that. Yet, it would be too obvious to come out and say, “Sugar is good for you!”
But they could try a diversion. They could try to find a new bad guy. They could try to create a root cause of health problems that was something other than their own product. And because the human body craves fat as an important source of nutrition, people will seek to fill in that craving with something that hasn’t been vilified in the way that fat had been. People will want more sweet stuff to fill in for their cravings for fat.
Brilliant.
Of course, it would only work if two things were in place:
There was a nugget of truth in the notion that “fat is bad for you” and,
They could find some scientists who would be willing to go along.
The first one, of course, is axiomatic. If you eat nothing but bacon and butter, you will not be healthy. Happy, but not healthy.
The second one took a bit of work, but there are always academics who have distinct points of view. A part of how academics can get published, etc., is if they have unique points of view, and with enough academics out there there are enough points of view, someone who has an agenda to push can always find someone to give voice to their commercial interests.
Sugar and Daylight Saving Time
How is this related to the fight to #LockTheClock?
To understand that you first need to understand a bit about me and this effort.
I spend time on this for a couple of reasons. The first is that it’s a topic that interests me. I didn’t really want to be the leader of this movement, but there wasn’t anyone else doing it so I decided that I could step up. I’m a writer and I’ve created three businesses, and so I figured I could make a blog and do some light advocacy on nights and weekends. I’ve been doing that for more than five years now.
I also have some searches set up so that every time there’s a story or a tweet about DST, I get a notification. I don’t read every single thing, but it’s easy to see some trends.
I’ve also seen a lot of efforts come and then fade away. I was the only one pushing the name “Lock the Clock” on the internet. Someone came along and registered locktheclock.com and even made a website. They then lost interest and now the domain sits dormant. I’ve seen reporters and politicians wholesale copy stuff off my website. I’ve seen dozens of different petition efforts, all of which have gone exactly nowhere.
So I really understand this space.
In the last year, however, I saw something that was actually new. It’s a website that’s pushing the point of view that we should switch to Standard Time year round.
The site, and the social media push around it, taken together are slick, much slicker than anything I’ve come up with.
Even more impressive is the collection of people with intimidating-looking academic credentials who pop up to push this particular agenda.
In fact, when taken as a whole, it looks a lot like… well, like the effort from the sugar industry.
I mean, what they have right now is two things:
A nugget of truth: Permanent Standard Time is likely better for circadian rhythms, and,
A group of scientists who are active in pushing that particular point of view.
Sound familiar?
Before we get into who is pushing that point of view, let’s dissect it.
As I said, it does have a nugget of truth. On my research page I put a link to a study often cited by these circadian sleep scientists. Especially if you live near the western edge of a time zone, permanent standard time is better for you from the perspective of sleep scientists.
But that is not the only body of science that exists.
If there was a shadowy, well-funded effort for Permanent DST, it would enable scientists who study health or childhood obesity to promote the studies showing that children and adults spend more time outside exercising if there is more sunlight after school and after work.
Or those people in the shadows might promote the work of scientists showing that Permanent DST would save lives of people and animals because night-driving is simply more dangerous.
Perhaps the unseen funders would push the idea that air pollution is worse in Permanent Standard Time.
Or maybe they would highlight the crime reduction in Permanent DST, or perhaps the improvement in retail sales.
And just to be clear, if any group was dogmatic in pushing that point of view, I would view that group just as suspiciously as I view the group now dogmatically pushing the other point of view.
An actual scientist said this very well in her paper:
While we agree that political actors need scientists’ advice in the DST/ST debate now, this does not justify a one-sided perspective. On the contrary, it underlines the importance of adequately communicating what scientists do (not yet) know. Especially in an emotionally charged debate, where scientists’ recommendations might clash with people’s preferences and perhaps even with the results of a referendum, we otherwise risk squandering scientists’ credibility in the long run.
What is the group in the shadows?
The interesting part for me personally is that I don’t yet know what industry is behind this particular push.
But the strategy, while dated, could be effective, as long as nobody sees who is in the background.
You see, my point of view that I’ve been super consistent on for the last six years is that we should first agree that we need to end the clock changing. After that we can have a discussion about what the right time zone is state by state.
That very notion is getting some serious traction.
That’s what Europe tried to do, and it makes sense. They’ve said that in 2021, the clock-changing will end and each country can make up it’s own mind about what time zone it wants to be in permanently. (Note from Scott in 2021, this didn’t actually happen.)
We could do the same thing. Arizona clearly wants to stay in Mountain Standard time, and that makes sense given the climate, the lifestyle, etc. Massachusetts, which is way east in the Eastern Time Zone, in general would like to be permanently in what’s now DST, or for that state it could be Atlantic Standard Time. The people of Indiana, which is nearly 1,000 miles from Massachusetts, may decide they want to be in the time zone of their neighbors in Illinois.
My point has always been that I shouldn’t decide that, and you shouldn’t decide that, but the people of each of those states should decide that.
If we agree to get rid of the clock changing, then each of the states will figure it out. And then after that we can have the related conversations about things like what time school should start.
So that’s why I have been saying that we should all come together and agree to #LockTheClock first, and then figure out the rest.
But now we have a group trying forcefully to argue the second question first. That has the effect of throwing sand into the gears of the whole #LockTheClock conversation.
Who would do such a thing? Who has a business interest in keeping the status quo.
I Do Not Know.
I guess we could wait 50 years to figure that out, as with the sugar industry, or we could make some guesses right now, and so that’s what I’m going to do here.
My best guess is that the bad guys right now are television executives, especially sportscasters.
In Standard Time, people stop doing stuff outside sooner, and come inside sooner after work and are quicker to get to their couch. A televised sportsball event that starts at 8 p.m. in the East starts at 5 p.m. in California. If it’s light outside, Californians may decide to spend time outside, but if it’s dark they’ll get in and turn on the game.
NFL games that start at 4 p.m. in the East begin during DST when there’s still a couple of hours of sunlight, tempting people to spend their Sunday afternoons outside. During Standard time those 4 p.m games start in the gloaming, the sun telegraphing that it’s time to go inside and get to the couch.
This is conjecture, of course, but based on one thing I know for sure after my visit to Connecticut.
I spent the better part of the day there, a small part testifying and most of the day talking to other legislators. By the time I left it was clear we’d worked out a compromise bill that had the votes needed to not only pass, but to pass with a wide margin.
And then some time went by, and… nothing.
Then came the news: The bill was dead. It didn’t get voted down in what we think of as part of the democratic process we learned about as kids. It died because some unseen hand made sure that it never made it to the floor to get voted on.
How did that happen?
I have some sources in Connecticut who tell me that ESPN, based in Bristol, Conn., along with some other TV Sports lobbyists, killed it.
How? Nobody knows.
We do know from the public records that ESPN spends about a quarter million dollars a year with the lobbying firm of Powers, Brennan & Griffin LLC.
And we know that in addition, ESPN has three in-house lobbyists that work to influence lawmakers in Hartford.
My guess is that someone from that lobbying firm had a quiet meeting with someone from the legislature in some quiet corner, probably of a steak restaurant, and talked about how this bill could be bad for Connecticut. And—just like the hopes and dreams of those of us who believe in democracy—the bill died not with a bang, but a nearly silent pfffffffffffffffffffffft.
But those people behind the scenes in Connecticut, and probably a bunch of others in New York City, I’m guessing, realized that the idea of #LockTheClock was starting to gather strength, and so that idea itself needs to be defeated.
And that’s when they came up with a plan. I’d like to think they called it the Sugar Plan, as a nod to their spiritual forefathers who helped them figure out how to scuttle an idea that’s bad for business.
The result of that plan is a push to keep us in Standard Time. It’s got just a nugget of truth, it’s got some academics willing to put their name on it. It’s perfect.
Who is behind all of this?
Is it the TV industry?
When I got interviewed for the Daily Show, one of the funny bits of back and forth was when I told Desi Lydic that the TV industry was in favor of having it darker earlier, she mocked indignation that anyone would accuse her employers—she called them “TV People”—of doing anything so cynical. I thought it was one of the funniest bits of the interview, and yet it got cut. Maybe the editors just didn’t think it was as funny, but…
If it’s not the TV people, is it someone else? Who is it that has this plan to muddy the #LockTheClock mission?
Will that plan work?
Not while I’m alive.
First I’m going to have some eggs with lots of butter, and then back to work getting one, clear idea out there into the world:
Let’s #LockTheClock!
Postscript: This post has been edited to remove any mention of any individual people. For an explanation, see this post.
Because this effort to fix Daylight Saving Time is basically just me writing blog posts, emailing legislators and talking to people, I never really step back and do any kind of planning or organizing.
I certainly never have marketing meetings to talk about the message.
But yesterday that happened for me in the Georgia state capitol.
And boy did it pay off.
OK, first the message, and then the back story:
Great, eh?
Only took me six years to come up with that. Jeesh.
OK, here’s the backstory:
For a while now I’ve been communicating with Rep. Wes Cantrell in Georgia. Like other legislators around the country, I immediately liked the guy. There are definitely both Democrats and Republicans who care about this, and the thing they always have in common is a tendency toward Good Government and being responsive to their constituents.
He told me the bill was coming up for a crucial hearing, and I have a bunch of frequent flier miles and hotel points, so I told him I’d be happy to fly down to testify. I’m so glad I went, because I got something really valuable in return: A clean, coherent message.
When I go to states to testify, I typically spend some time with the sponsor, and then sometimes there’s some impromptu lobbying, and quite often some talking to reporters. As a former reporter, I’m always happy to do that.
But I never really listen to what I’m saying, I just blurt out as many facts as I can.
Yesterday, however, after the hearing, I got to sit down with Rep. Cantrell and a couple of other people who had been in the hearing room, including his wife. One of those in the room said that when I said one thing, the whole issue really crystalized for him.
The government is in charge of clocks. The clocks are killing people. It’s time to Lock The Clock.
And then one of the reporters who was there featured that snippet in his excellent report from the hearing. (Also, loved the Girl Scouts!) (Also, the local Fox station also did a fantastic story.)
So now I have it.
I got the hashtag #LockTheClock when I testified in Michigan, and now I have, essentially, a vision statement for the movement.
The first line is a given: The government, properly, has an interest in a unified and coherent system for time.
The second line is the gut punch. It may not have been clear when the Uniform Time Act of 1966 passed, but it is crystal clear now that the time change kills people every year.
And the last line is the call to action.
Feel free to share that however you like to share these things.
Thanks to Rep. Cantrell, and all the people I talked to in Georgia, who were as lovely and helpful as could be. Thanks to Noor Younis for the background photo.
And thanks to you for reading this, and helping to get that message out.
I testified Monday in Wyoming on a very sensible Daylight Saving Time bill, and it sailed out of committee on an 8-1 vote.
(That one no vote was sort of smiling as he voted no. I think he was fine with it passing. He was distinguished — my way of saying he was really old — and I think he was voting to represent the constituency of people who remember when Standard Time was more common before the Uniform Time Act of 1966.)
My testimony was impromptu, mostly just answering questions. It was a respectful and legitimate conversation on the merits. I was very happy to hear the Farm Bureau testify that it supported the bill. The lobbyist from the bureau alluded to the tortured history that farmers have with Daylight Saving Time, and in a sense he saw this bill as a chance to put all that, finally, to rest.
Yesterday I testified in my home state of Colorado. The last time I testified in Colorado the proceedings were not so respectful as I was personally attacked by members of the House, and I was even told that my comments were out of order. I wanted to stand up, like Al Pacino, and yell: “I’m out of order??? You’re out of order! This whole place is out of order!!!!”
But I didn’t. I just apologized meekly and moved on. That was two years ago.
My plan going into this year was to speak truth to power, and if I got ruled out of order, well, maybe those interested can just read this or watch this video and see what I would have said before I get cut off.
In the end, I didn’t deliver these remarks below exactly. You can read an excellent writeup of what happened from Alex Burness in the Denver Post, but the comments below were the heart of what I wanted to say. What I learned after my testimony made me grow even more cynical about the process. See below for that.
Dear members of the kill committee,
My name is Scott Yates, and I’m the leader of the LockTheClock movement to end the insanity of changing the clocks twice per year.
I’ve testified all over the country on this topic, and the interchange with the lawmakers is always respectful, and very much on the actual topic of the significant health and safety concerns related to the government mandating that the entire population change all the clocks by an hour twice per year. Except in Colorado.
When I testified here in Colorado, I pointed out that the main reason that the ski industry said they were against fixing what is broken with time is that they needed morning sunshine to examine the ski lifts. I suggested that we all pitch in and buy them some flashlights.
That’s when I was ruled out of order.
So I won’t do that today. No way.
After that, I started doing some research, and came to a startling conclusion. In short, the whole “morning light” thing was not the real reason. I don’t know for sure what the real reason is, but I suspect money is involved. Once a ski resort has sold you a lift ticket, it doesn’t make any more money on you the more you ski. It only makes more money if you stop skiing and get into a resteraunt. The only way to get you off the mountain is to make it dark.
But as I sit here today, I don’t actually think the ski industry even cares that much about this issues. Indeed, I think that if you kill this bill today, what is happening is simply a raw expression of power.
I have been working on this issue for six years now, and I pay close attention to what’s happening around the country. Two states—Arizona and Hawaii—have locked the clock in Standard Time. Another 11 states have passed some kind of bill or resolution to stay in Daylight Time year round. Nearly all the rest have some kind of bill working to #LockTheClock. Only six states aren’t doing anything right now.
Also I’m working closely with the office of Sen. Marco Rubio and Rep. Rob Bishop, both of whom have federal bills that would Lock the Clock, or allow states to do so more easily. Both have lots of bipartisan support, and in this post-impeachment world where legislators are anxious to say that they indeed did get something done and the only way to do so is with a bipartisan bill, both offices are optimistic that they will pass something this year.
But I’d like to draw your attention to five of the states that have passed legislation to fix Daylight Saving Time:
Washington,
Oregon,
California,
Utah, and
Maine.
From Mount Hood and Olympic Valley in the west to Sugarloaf in the east, or Jackson or Park City here in the Mountain Time Zone, there are a lot of ski resorts in those five states.
On Monday one of the 8 Yes votes in Wyoming was the representative whose district includes Jackson. No pushback at all. In the other states with a significant ski industry, absolutely no opposition. Nothing.
Does the sun interact with mountains differently in Colorado than it does in California? Do clocks work differently for skiers in Maine or Oregon?
Which leads me to think that maybe I was wrong, that the ski industry doesn’t really care about getting more people off the mountain and into restaurants? What if they don’t care about this issue that much at all?
Then what are we left with? What possible reason could the ski industry have in wanting to kill this bill year after year?
The only possible explanation I’m left with is that the ski lobbyists are killing this just because they can.
Larry Bird, one of the greats of the game of basketball, would sometimes deliver a hip check or make some unsportsmanlike comment, and not get called for it. Why would he do that? Precisely to show that he was the master in that building.
Similarly, I think the ski lobbyists use this topic simply as a way to flex.
Think about it from this perspective: Let’s say that you are doing a town hall in, say, Aurora, and a constituent stands up and says, “I understand that federal law may change, and we could have had a chance to vote on which time zone we like best, and you voted against giving us, the people who elected you, a voice. Why is that?” And then you respond with your voice trailing off: “The ski industry doesn’t have enough flashlights.”
It is beyond absurd—it is the stuff that turns people off to politics, and especially in this era, that is a shame.
This is good government 101. The government regulates time. The way that it does so right now kills and injures people. There is no partisan angle, just historically bad management of clocks. Previous generations of politicians didn’t fully realize the high cost in life and money that clock-switching caused, but now we do know and yet we do nothing. Why?
Because of some lobbyists? Because of the raw exercise of power under the gold dome?
Imagine yourself again at that town hall, and when that constituent asks, imagine how great it would be for you to say: “You know what, I voted for you. I voted to give you that choice. It cost me politically, but I did it anyway because my job is to govern, and if we can’t even govern the clocks, then what does that say? So I voted to bring some sanity to the clocks, and to give you a chance to be heard.”
So I ask you today: Hold your head up high and vote yes.
Thank you very much.
Postscript: How Democracy Dies, Just a Little
So, that was the testimony that I didn’t give, but my comments included a lot of that, but not the part calling out the lobbyists so directly.
Also, the reason that I had used Aurora as my hypothetical is that I thought the person most likely to buck the party leadership and vote would be Rhonda Fields of Aurora. If you click on that link you’ll see that she’s on the “Kill Committee” also known as “State Affairs.”
And she may have been willing to go her own way on that day. But she wasn’t on that committee on the day that bill was heard.
Colorado is a pretty clean state. We have these great rules that, for example, make it so that every bill gets a hearing. Most states aren’t like that, and bills often just die with no hearing at all.
But there are still ways to kill bills, and one is to assign them to the “state affairs” committee, a group whose mandate is so nebulous and membership so small that it can kill just about anything.
So the ski industry lobbyists worked with the leadership of the State Senate to assign this bill to the kill committee, and then just to make sure it would die, the leadership changed the membership of the committee just for one day.
Yes, just on February 19th, 2020, Sen. Fields was not on that committee, and she was replaced by Sen. Kerry Donovan.
Why Donovan?
Well, for one she’s from Vail. Not just from Vail, her family practically founded the town. She talked about how her brother worked as one of the guys who inspects ski lifts, so she was insulted at my “flashlight” comments.
In short, she was about as reliable of a vote as you could find who would be willing to carry water for the ski industry lobbyists.
I was sunk before I walked into the room.
But the fact that the ski lobbyists had to go to such extreme measures to kill the bill, I think means the gig will soon be up.
And besides, the amendment that we offered was a good one. It didn’t commit Colorado to do anything, just to take a preference poll that will only take effect if the federal law changes. Really, if the ski industry was smart they would agree to it so that they can try to convince Coloradans to stay in Standard Time year round. If daylight time would really mean death and dismemberment of ski employees, they can try to make that case to the voters and see if the voters believe it more than I do. Maybe the voters will buy it, they’ve believed less credible claims than that.
If the ski industry does not make that case, it will be stuck with the federal law, which most likely will be putting us into permanent Daylight Time.
The Denver Post story by Alex Burness was so great, because it put right into print so everyone now knows what was formerly known only by people who hang around the capitol a lot: The ski industry is super powerful in Colorado, and is stopping the legislature from doing what it would otherwise want to do.
Now that the very concept of going against the ski industry is out in the open and being talked about, it’s kind of like the Emperor with No Clothes. It only takes one person saying it publicly, and the gig is up.
Times are changing, and the time is going to be changing.
There were two basic approaches through last year to fix DST:
A bill that says the state will go into permanent Daylight Saving Time, either when neighboring states do it, or when it is allowed by the federal government to do so.
A resolution calling on the federal government to allow the states to go into permanent Daylight Saving Time.
This year, we came up with a third approach in Colorado, which is to ask the voters which time zone they prefer once the feds pass an act.
I posted links to model language for all three below.
If you are a legislator currently working on this topic, well, you might consider this third way.
If you want to do it the first way, and think you have the votes to get it enacted… Go for it! (And let me know how I can help.) If you do not have the votes, however, maybe you could amend your current bill with this “Colorado” approach?
It is more substantial than a resolution, and it may help spur the change that we need out of Washington.
Model Daylight Saving Time bills – Neighboring state dependent
Third Way: Call for vote of the people before Federal Mandate
This is the complex, but legally sound way to ask for a vote of the people to figure out what permanent time they would prefer in the (likely) event that federal law suddenly takes away the clock-changing.
To download the PDF as created by the legislative lawyers in Colorado, click here.
If you have another approach, or think there is some language that would be helpful to legislators, please contact me.
And Good Luck! This really seems to be the tipping-point year.
I knew when I started this journey that fixing Daylight Saving Time would be hard, but I didn’t know about the lawyers.
Or the time travel.
In spite of the fact (or maybe because of the fact) that I was on Comedy Central, this issue is no joke. When I first started on this six years ago, I just wrote my blog posts and hoped for the best.
Now it’s getting real.
Tomorrow afternoon, the Colorado Legislature will once again take up this issue, something I learned about from my daily alerts from BillTrack50.
In Colorado, however, it’s always been the same: The bills die in the first committee they hit. There’s never even that much debate. The ski industry kills them every time. The ski industry representatives never even gave much of a reason for killing the bills. One year they said something about needing the morning light to examine the ski lifts.
I suggested that we all pitch in and buy them some flashlights, and while that made some of the legislators in the room laugh, still… incredibly… the bill died.
I don’t think this is actually that big of an issue for the ski industry, but that industry is so powerful in Colorado that the lobbyists just kill the bills instinctively, like swatting flies.
So I didn’t have much hope for the bill that was offered up this year, especially when I saw that was assigned to what everyone in the statehouse calls the “kill committee.”
The sponsor, however, is a guy named Scott, so that gave me some hope, even though it’s his last name 😉 He agreed to meet me.
Now, here was the weird thing for me: I was meeting with a State Senator, a big shot in any state. And my plan was to go in and tell him that his bill stunk, and that he should throw it out and do something different.
What kind of ego does it take to do that? Huge!
My ego is big, but I didn’t know if it would be big enough. I figured my chance of success was about 20 percent that I could get a guy I’ve never met to take something that he felt passionate enough about to introduce a bill, and instead throw that out and do something that is untested, complex and involves time travel. (More on that in a second.)
But I hadn’t met Sen. Scott.
He invited me into his office, and we had a grand conversation. It turns out that while he does have an ego big enough to put his name on billboards and bumperstickers, he had no ego about his bill. He also knew that it was likely to die in its current form and in front of the Kill Committee, so he was probably a bit more open to suggestion because of that.
I sat down with him and we talked about the current state of Daylight Saving Time, especially about the bills now in front of the U.S. Congress. I told him that of the two bills, the Sunshine Protection Act probably had the best chance of passing.
Daylight Saving Time wonk section
(Feel free to skip over this if you don’t want to get really deep into the sausage-making part of DST legislation, but you’ll miss the time-travel part, so…)
Three things you need to know here:
The Sunshine Protection Act calls for the whole country to go into Daylight Saving Time as soon as it is approved.
The U.S. Congress serves all year long.
The Colorado Legislature only meets in the first part of the year, adjourning in early May.
I’ve been working with the office of Sen. Rubio, the sponsor of the federal bill. Among other things, I’ve been expressing my concern about the enactment of the bill, which is immediate. If the bill passes before the first Sunday of November, that’s it! No more clock changing.
Now, you think I would love that. But here’s the thing… I want a solution that’s really going to last. We’ve had some quick solutions in the past, and they haven’t stuck. I do not want to see that happen again.
So what I would like to see is the European approach: Decide that we are no longer going to have clock-changing, and then give each state a year to decide what time zone it wants to land in permanently.
My hunch is that most states, like most people, will want to end up in what is now Daylight Saving Time, but there could be some exceptions, especially among states along the western edge of their time zones. Indiana and Michigan are probably the two most likely candidates here.
Also, some of the states that are split right now—North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Tennessee, and Kentucky—are other good candidates to unify under a single time zone.
Here in Colorado, I’m pretty sure that voters will want to move to permanent Daylight Saving Time, but I’m not sure, and I think the voters should make that decision.
But if Rubio’s bill passes, we will never have the chance to decide. It will just happen. The federal law will change and Colorado will not have a legislature in session to do anything about it, even ask the voters for a preference.
Sen. Scott figured out that from his perspective, this makes the matter rather urgent. He’s a proponent of Permanent DST also, but he also is not crazy about the idea of a federal law coming down on Colorado before we have any chance to have any say at all.
So together we figured out that what should really happen is that we should have a referendum that asks the voters this:
“IF FEDERAL LAW CHANGES TO REPEAL THE ANNUAL ADVANCEMENT OF TIME COMMONLY KNOWN AS DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME, WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING OPTIONS DO YOU PREFER FOR THE YEAR-ROUND TIME IN COLORADO?” EACH ELECTOR MUST HAVE THE OPTION TO SELECT “STAYING ON STANDARD TIME YEAR-ROUND” OR “STAYING ON DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME YEAR-ROUND”?
Now if you think that is how I talk, or how Sen. Ray Scott talks, you don’t know us at all. We talk like regular people. But Sen. Scott is indeed a senator, so he asked the legislative drafting office to put what we were talking about into the all-caps, legally proper version you see there.
(Lawyers. We all love to make fun of them, but when we need something legal done, we want a good one, and luckily Colorado has great ones.)
But then the staff lawyer who helped us pointed out the bit about time travel. It goes like this:
The federal bill right now says that it goes into effect as soon as it is signed.
It also allows that any state on permanent Standard Time the day before enactment can stay on that time. (Arizona, Hawaii and Puerto Rico all are on Standard Time right now.)
If Colorado voters choose to stay on Standard Time year round, they only want to do that if the federal bill becomes law and takes away the clock changing.
So they won’t be voting to go on Permanent Standard Time no matter what, only in the event the federal law changes.
That means that Colorado will actually go into Permanent Standard Time on the day before the federal law is enacted.
It could be that the federal law will change after the legislature is out, but before the election.
If that happens, and then in the election Coloradans vote to go on Permanent Standard Time, we will have to—legally if not in reality—travel back in time and declare that we are in Permanent Standard Time on the day before the enactment so that we can follow federal and Colorado law.
As Dr. Emmett Brown might say: “Eureka!”
I did not go to law school, and I’m kind of glad, because I didn’t have to write the language to make that work.
But the lawyers did write it, and Sen. Scott OK’d it, and now it is going to be introduced tomorrow.
It is complex, sure, but if there was an easy solution to figure all this out, someone would have come up with it already, and we wouldn’t be suffering the deadly effects of the clock-switching.
Will this work?
I have to say that I’m hopeful that even the Kill Committee will pass this. And even if it doesn’t, I’ve got four states with sponsors already waiting to get this language so they can look at it for their own states, and those are just the four that wrote to me late last week. I wouldn’t be surprised if a dozen states end up passing something like this during this legislative session.
Why?
It solves several problems:
The problem of which way to go. Everyone hates the clock changing, but science and popular opinion are at best mixed on the issue of which side is better: Permanent DST or Permanent Standard Time. Most of the polls have leaned toward Permanent DST, but they are usually muddled because they also ask if people want to keep changing twice a year. There is a percentage of people who say they actually like that, although I haven’t met one in real life.
This approach strips everything else away and asks the voters which one they want.
The problem of which way businesses want to go. People have the power here. The way it has worked is that businesses—often way behind the scenes—have used paid lobbyists to get what they want, which in most cases is the status quo. Now if, for instance, the recreation industries want to make the case that Permanent DST is better, they can do so right out in public and see if they can convince the voters. If the television industry thinks it can make the case that we should not be outside, but be inside on the couch watching TV, they can say that. On TV, even. But they won’t be able to kill bills in some dimly lit bar buying drinks for legislators.
The federal law problem Every day state legislators have to deal with the consequences of federal laws. This bill solves a problem with coming federal legislation before it even comes. That’s the kind of pro-active thing that states always want to do, but rarely can. In this case, it works.
The when-to-act problem It is always hard to know when to act as a legislator. They don’t want to solve problems before they exist, but they also don’t want to come so late to a problem that legislation seems like an after-thought. This approach deals with a federal bill before it becomes an issue, and at the same time gives voters a chance to weigh in on an issue that I am certain every legislator has heard from constituents about.
The timing part of this is something I hadn’t really thought of, I got that from Sen. Scott. I just think of this as an effort that I just keep working on, like the people who paint the Golden Gate Bridge from one end to the other and then start all over again.
But Sen. Scott pointed out the timing issue. This may be the only chance the states get to have a say about this issue before it gets yanked away by the feds.
As the leader of an admittedly oddball movement like #LockTheClock, I get a lot of weird email.
Most of it is fine.
For instance, every month or so I get a note from someone who just had the best idea ever: Move the clocks a half hour and call it good. They think that I probably never thought of that, that I haven’t heard it 100 times before, and that now I should give up on what I’ve been working on for years and do all the work to make it happen the way they want it to happen.
There was a time that I engaged with those people, but now I just delete.
The rest of the mail is fine. There’s lawmakers from small states or aides to legislators from bigger states. Journalists. People just telling me that they agree and that I should keep going. It’s all great.
So then one day I get a very polite note asking if I’d be interested in talking to a producer from The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. At first I thought it was a joke, but the email was actually from TheDailyShow.com, and 10 seconds of searching showed me that the producer was legit.
My first impulse was that I should play it cool, and wait a while before I replied. I did that for 10, maybe 15 seconds.
I wrote back and played it cool, saying: Yes! Love to! Like I’m going to say no.
I ended up talking to two different producers. I had no idea where any of this was leading, but I just told them about all the history, etc. They seemed really interested.
Then they asked if I’d be willing to go to Arizona for a day to get interviewed.
Again… like I’d say no.
They picked up the tab for the flight, and literally apologized that they wouldn’t be able to spring for first class. I thought about acting all indignant, but I’m no actor, and didn’t want to screw it up.
So, I went to a clock shop at the appointed time. You know how anyone can shoot a video anywhere anytime these days? Well, they couldn’t do this kind of video. If you haven’t seen it, the spot is here, or here:
While it looks like I’m just sitting down for a chat, the only way to make the video look that great is with a crew of professionals: Camera operators, a sound person, some sort of director, and then the producer who came from New York City, and of course, Desi Lydic. Every one of them was mellow, funny, hard working, and a total pro. I mean, I think they were, it’s not like I’m a TV person.
Even though it may look like I am. Watching that video again now I’m struck by how funny I am, how my reactions are timed just right and I had just the right look at the right time.
Now, in my day job I’m trying to fix “fake news” and so I suppose I should be against this, but I am just not that funny. The editors spliced together little bits of reactions just perfectly so it makes me look like a comic genius. It was really great.
They had plenty to work with. I was in that chair for more than an hour, answering questions and going over some bits a couple of times. Still, I think they edited it to the perfect length.
Well… there was one edit that I might have made differently…
When Desi asked me if there were any other culprits that keep the clock broken, I said that the TV industry was actually involved. I pointed out that they don’t want it to be light out after work, they want it to be dark so that everyone will come inside and sit on the couch and watch TV.
Feigning an indignant huff, Desi said something like: Look, you can point out the evil of the retailers, and the Germans, and the golf people and the candy people, but do NOT question the wisdom or the morals of the television people!!!
That bit got cut. Hmmmmmm.
The idea of doing the interview in a clock shop seemed like a great idea, with only one problem: The clocks. Nearly all of them made some kind of sound, and none of them were on the right time, so in the middle of a line there’d be some GONG! right by Desi’s head and she’d grimace or mutter something. It was hilarious for a couple of times, and then she and all the crew seemed a little annoyed, but they kept rolling. I thought one of her reactions to a clock going off might make it into the final bit, but those also got cut. Maybe it was just funny to the people trying to keep the whole thing on schedule.
Once it was done, Desi was nice enough to take a picture with me, and then she and the crew went off to the desert to film the rest of the sketch.
She’s now back in New York, making people laugh, and I’m back to my desk in Denver, trying to figure out how to fix Daytime Save Light Time.
Editor’s Note: I was happy to run a guest post from my own son, and now I’m happy to run one from a young person I’ve never met! (Don’t worry, I checked him out, and he’s a real person.) I will have another post about the amazing experience of being featured on the Daily Show soon, but wanted to get this post up first. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. As we saw in Illinois, student involvement can go a long way! —S.Y.
The economic cost of obesity is also a concern. The CDC reported that it cost $147 billion in 2008 dollars.
Of course, the obesity debate is subject to partisan squabbling, pitting the “food police” versus those among the more libertarian camp. Thankfully, there is a bipartisan response to the epidemic that would anger neither of these groups.
That response? #LockTheClock.
Numerous studies have shown that shifts into and out of Daylight Saving Time (DST) increases laziness. One 2012 study looked at cyberloafing and found a positive correlation between cyberloafing and the spring transition into DST.
The spring shift into DST—when the light is moved into the afternoon—has been demonstrated to increase physical activity among children in the afternoon.
This effect is not limited to children. Measuring the time before the fall back to Standard Time and the transition into DST, two researchers writing in the Journal of Environmental Psychology found that improving lighting conditions in the afternoon was likely to cause an increase in both cycling and walking.
The researchers studied cycling and walking patterns in Arlington County Virginia from 2011 to 2016. Their findings showed that when compared to dark evening conditions, the hour of “extra sunlight” from DST “resulted in a 62 percent increase in pedestrians and a 38 percent increase in cyclists.”
An additional study from the University of Washington estimated the economic costs of the DST extension in 2007. This extension put the United States on DST for an additional month in the spring. The researchers used this change as a study period and found that the extension resulted in $250 million in health expenditure savings. And this was a conservative estimate, as they note that savings could have been as high as $8.33 billion.
Why? Simply put, more daylight in the afternoon means that more people spend time outside instead of sitting and watching TV. People spent as much as 30 more minutes outside per day, compared to the previous DST-ST transition time. This translated to a 1-lb reduction in fat every 2.5 weeks. Not bad for just moving daylight around.
So sure, DST won’t singlehandedly defeat the obesity epidemic. But considering everything else the DST-ST transitions do to people, locking the clock for permanent DST is a cost-effective way to incentivize exercise.
So, Congress, your move. For the health of your constituents, please #LockTheClock.
Jonathan Helton is a student majoring in Law and Politics at Freed-Hardeman University. He is interested in miscellaneous types of public policy and has published articles about foreign aid and U.S. maritime legislation. While in high school, he was an active member of his debate club and had the pleasure of debating about DST during one year. This article represents some of the research he compiled.
Editor’s Note: I always love running guest posts, and especially love them when written by my son! Truth be told, this started out as a class assignment, but when he told me he linked to my site from his paper, I had to read it, and I love it. (Proud dad, etc.)
And by the way, this is becoming a key part of the #LockTheClock movement: One of the last arguments made against getting rid of clock changing is that we shouldn’t force students to go to school in the dark. My response has always been the same: They are already mostly going to school in the dark in rural areas and in the northernmost parts of the country, and it’s time to adjust the start times, especially for high schools. That’s why I say we should have a year-long phase-in time for fixing DST so that schools can look at what the clock time will be relative to the sun time for the next school year, and make adjustments that are right for their districts.
In some places, that may mean high school starts at 9:30 or even 10 a.m. Do you know one teenager who would object to that?
Through no fault of their own, teens are sleep deprived.
The current education system in the US is not set up for the success of teens. Despite the plethora of evidence in support of later start time, there has not yet been the shift. While there are obstacles to the move, there is nothing that is big enough to outweigh the clear benefits of a later start. If the US wants to have successful teens, it needs to shift its school start times to later in the day.
Teens need sleep, and lots of it, if they want to function at a normal or excellent level. In order for teens to get this sleep, they need to sleep in until later in the day. Teens don’t start secreting melatonin until, on average, 10:45 p.m. Additionally, teens don’t stop those secretions until eight in the morning. When combined this is a brutal double punch that prevents teens from going to bed early, and makes it difficult to wake up in the morning. The obvious solution here is not to change biology, but instead to accommodate for it by delaying school start times.
To be fair, there are arguments for maintaining the current system. New start times would require a reworking of many transportation patterns. While this may have slight initial challenges, it is nothing that can’t be worked around. Additionally, many teenagers are responsible for getting themselves to school and would appreciate the later start. Despite the argument that teens would simply stay up later, the research finds something different. Some parents and professionals worry that a later ending time would leave students too worn out for their sports, arts, and other activities. In truth, however, the well rested students would train harder, think more creatively, and excel throughout the day. While the points exist against later start times, the reality is, in fact, in support of the pushback.
A later start time would also help solve the problem of Daylight Saving Time. One frequent argument for not moving into year-round daylight time is that it would force students into traveling to school while in the dark. Later start times would fix this, giving not only the benefits from the later start, but the benefits from permanent DST. The shift to later start times could be the event that triggers the move, or vice versa. Either way, everyone comes out on top.
Teens need sleep, it’s about time they were given it. Moving the school day later saves lives, improves performance, and generally improves life for the world’s future leaders.
This decade has started out with news that’s really difficult for people all around the world.
And yet, the world keeps turning. The sun keeps rising and setting, and clocks keep ticking, or doing whatever the equivalent of ticking is in the digital world.
I’ve been watching this DST issue for more than five years now, and I can tell you that this year I’m seeing a level of press interest, proposed legislation, and viewership to this blog that’s off the charts. I always see a big bump right around the DST clock changes, but in 2020 I’m seeing that kind of interest in January.
That’s great!
I have yet to write about my appearance late last year at a conference put on by the National Conference of State Legislators.
The panel discussion itself wasn’t remarkable to close readers of this blog. Calvin Schermerhorn, a historian, and Ray Ward, a state legislator from Utah, and I talked about the convoluted path that got us here, and the now certainty that this historical oddity will soon go the way of, say, a ban on women voting.
Perhaps what was most remarkable was the fact that we were on the agenda. This was a substantial, policy-based group gathering to discuss issues related to health care, transportation, economic development, etc. And the issue of Daylight Saving Time fit in perfectly. Even a couple of years ago there’s no way a body like the National Conference of State Legislators would hold a session on this topic.
And the conversation wasn’t hypothetical, and it wasn’t the kind of conversation I had all the time in the last decade where people wondered if this was an issue at all. Not one person said, “Why are we even talking about this when there’s so many more important things to talk about?” I used to get that all the time.
No, the conversation was tactical.
Should our state run a bill that coordinates with neighboring states?
What should we put in our bill that will make it work with the federal bills now being considered?
What is the best timing?
There are no perfect answers to any of those questions by the way. My answer in nearly all cases is that legislators could probably learn best from the bills that have passed already, like these:
And in Massachusetts, the state passed a bill to come up with a study committee, and that committee recommended strongly that the state #LockTheClock.
More than 40 states heard bills last year, and six passed something. How many will pass a bill this year? My guess is double last year, plus one. That will be 13.
So that means we’ll go from 1 in 2018 to 6 in 2019 to 13 in 2020 for a goal of 20 by 2020!
(How’s that for a catchy goal?)
Stay tuned to this site, and be sure to sign up for the newsletter so you get all the news on our march toward 20 by 2020.
The newsletter comes at most once a month (and it hasn’t even been that of late) so don’t worry, it won’t jam up your inbox.
As part of what I do trying to #LockTheClock, I sometimes talk to legislators or the staff of legislators. It doesn’t take much time, and it always seems to be appreciated, so I’m happy to do it.
A couple of recent conversations have had me run into an interesting problem.
To get why it’s interesting, though, a bit of background:
Bay State legislators, with the skillful prompting of extraordinary citizen leadership, are considering a move to Permanent Daylight Saving Time.
Close readers of this blog know, however, that such a move isn’t possible under the current law. The only thing allowed is staying in Standard Time. That’s not what they want, however, and it makes sense for that state as it is so far east in the Eastern Time Zone. Sunset will come at 4:15 on December 21st in Boston, more than an hour earlier than in Indianapolis, Atlanta, Cincinnati and other big cities on the western side of that time zone.
So the plan now is for Massachusetts to move one time zone to the east, to the Atlantic Time Zone, and then stay on Standard Time year round. (That will be the same to them as Permanent DST.)
That clever approach, by the way, first came not from New England, but from a legislator from New Mexico. He hasn’t been able to get his bill passed yet, something I’ve written about at length.
And it’s not law yet in Massachusetts yet either, but the signs all look good.
So, that’s what’s prompted some of those interesting conversations.
What if, for example, the states in the Pacific Time Zone took the same approach? Oregon and Washington have already passed laws saying that if California goes into permanent DST, they will, too.
So I talked to some staff members of legislators in California. They were bummed because they know that they can only switch to permanent Standard Time. I then told them about the Massachusetts approach, and their ears picked up.
Until the point we figured out an issue with that approach: California would be moving into the Mountain Time Zone.
Now, I love the Mountain Time Zone, it’s where I live, but I understand why the perception could be a big problem.
It’s easy for Bay Staters to think of themselves in the Atlantic time zone. It juts out into the Atlantic, and the identity of the state is tied to the ocean. Heck, there’s a sculpture of a cod in the Massachusetts House of Representatives.
And while California has some mountains, the idea of being in the Mountain Time Zone may be the thing that keeps that state from trying this innovative solution.
Same for, say, Illinois. Chicago thinks of itself as kind of the capital of the Central Time Zone. Could legislators there swallow their egos and move to the Eastern Time Zone?
Or what if West Virginia wants to move to permanent DST? No part of that state touches the Atlantic, would it be OK being in the Atlantic Time Zone?
Clearly, the best answer here is if Congress would take action to:
Make a law that to #LockTheClock,
Make it take effect in 2021, and
Allow states that are on a time-zone border to pick which time zone they want to be in permanently.
But they may not do that if states don’t take action first. Seven states have now passed some form of law saying they want the status quo to change. Will Congress wait until half have passed something? Two-thirds? All of them? At what point will Washington decide to lead instead of follow?
Typically in the week after the “Fall Back” change interest in DST drops off a cliff. People are just too depressed coming home from work in the dark, so they plop on the couch and start watching TV. (eds. note: Is this a story?) With all that, Halloween behind us, lots of work to do and the holidays barreling toward us, nobody is able to care enough to even Google DST and figure out what to do.
But nearly a full week after the change, I just heard what was probably the most nuanced and spot-on view of the politics surrounding Daylight Saving Time, maybe ever.
Here it is. The whole show is funny, but the DST bit starts about 53:30.
Several little things here:
Of the items on the Rant Wheel, only DST got the audience laughing just by saying the name.
Jon said that he’s asked eight different candidates what their position is on DST. I’ve only seen Yang’s view. (He’s on board.) What are the others’ views???
The presentation about the science was great. Not to toot my own horn here, but I’m really glad that I made that research page like three or four years ago so that people would start treating this like the public health issue that it is, not a quirky annoyance that we endure for the farmers for some damn reason.
But the best part was the way that Jon basically walked all of us through his own evolution. He started out thinking that we should all just do what he would like the best, but he studied it and came up with some nuance, which is rare in the world of politics.
And he came so so close to the right solution, but didn’t quite get all the way.
Jon, we haven’t met, but allow me to pitch in, if you will.
You started out thinking that we should all just go to permanent DST. You pointed out, correctly, that the most deadly part of the whole DST thing is the “Spring Forward” change, when heart attacks spike. (Traffic accidents, strokes, workplace accidents, too, but just the heart attack thing is plenty.)
And you point out that the fall change plunges many of us into a forced “Well of depression.”
But then you go into a discussion of if it’s better for states to be in Standard Time or Daylight Saving Time.
The evolution you made was a great one, but you didn’t address, at least directly, the first issue, the one about not making the switch twice a year.
What we need to do is first say that we won’t be switching the clocks. Hence the hashtag: #LockTheClock.
And then we should do exactly what you say, and let the states decide. You are right, this is actually an instance of non-racist states rights.
However…
If we do it your way—some states on Standard, some states on DST, some still switching—we end up with a confused patchwork of states that will make everyone a little crazy. The Uniform Time Act of 1966 was written to clean up just that exact problem.
Luckily, there is a solution, and I’m sort of surprised you didn’t mention it given how much research you clearly did.
The solution comes to us from Europe, where the European Union made the decision to end the clock changing in 2021, and gave the member countries up until then to figure out which time zone they want to be in permanently.
If we did that we would:
address your point about states rights,
fix the “Spring Forward into your sudden and painful death” change problem, and
allow for differences in geography.
As a bonus, that will give everyone some time to figure out the school start times and all the rest of the ancillary issues.
So, Jon, great work, and now just one more step to make in your evolution on this issue and you’ll be at the one sane place that could actually happen.
I’m hoping that with that one more step you will—quoting your mission statement— “decide that you want to help fix this mess too.”
But overall, thanks so much for your rant. It was really great and will advance the conversation a lot.
This post is from 2019, and it is still funny, but if you want a full collection of all the memes, gifs, jokes, etc., you may just want to click on the Daylight Saving Time meme tag.
The fun never ends, it seems, so here are some of the best #LockTheClock memes I’ve seen this year that were not in one of the previous collections:
Don’t forget that tonight astronomers stop the rotation of the Earth for an hour for routine maintenance (mantle flushing, core convection rebalancing, Moho layer alignment, and so on). Things should be good as new when you wake up. The Sun might rise earlier but that’s normal.
I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if an entire hour of time suddenly appeared. To offset this gained hour of sleep for the humans due to #DaylightSavingTime, I will cause then to lose an hour of sleep by knocking the lamp off the table. Sweet dreams, bipeds.
The Massachusetts legislature, what they call the “General Court,” is considering a fix to Daylight Saving Time. I couldn’t be there on the day they first heard testimony, but I’m planning a trip to the Bay State at some point to talk to legislators about this bill.
In the meantime, here’s the official testimony I’m sending in:
Dear Sen. Keenan, Rep. Gregoire, Sen. Pacheco and members of the Joint Committee on State Administration and Regulatory Oversight,
History doesn’t repeat itself, the saying goes, but it does rhyme.
You are now considering a bill that would put Massachusetts squarely in the lead for the state taking the smartest and best step forward in fixing the twice-yearly madness of changing clocks into and out of Daylight Saving Time.
Of course it would be Massachusetts.
You see, we may never have had Daylight Saving Time if it hadn’t been for a famed Massachusetts retailer, Lincoln Filene.
Mr. Filene figured out that if there was more daylight after people got off work, they’d have more time to shop, and he’d make more money.
But he figured out that if he said that, or called it Buy More Stuff After Work Time, or Make More Money For Filene’s Time, nobody would go for it. So he called it “Daylight Saving” time, and the name stuck.
He also realized that he needed a better reason to switch the clocks, so he and his PR team came up with the stuff about the farmers. That’s why everyone thinks DST is for the farmers. It’s not, and never has been. In fact, they’ve always hated it. The only reason we think it was for the farmers is one of the greatest PR con jobs of all time.
His plan didn’t actually have time to work, WWI got in the way, and the Germans started “War Time” and the Brits followed suit, and then the U.S.
But the name that Filene came up with is the name we use, still. The leadership on this issue came from Beantown and the Bay State.
It’s not the proudest moment for the state, but now you on this committee and eventually the entire great state of Massachusetts can take the lead in fixing the problem.
What, exactly, is the problem?
In short, Daylight Saving Time is a killer. The “Fall Back” change, annoying as it is, isn’t actually all that bad. An extra hour of sleep is a good thing.
The “Spring Forward” change, however, is a legitimate public policy health issue.
Heart attacks go up. Strokes. Traffic accidents. Workplace accidents. All go up in those days after the government sneaks into our homes and sets the alarm clocks to go off an hour earlier than our bodies expect it.
A recent study from Germany makes it clear that all these factors combine to kill people at a rate that is no laughing matter. (All the research can be found here.)
Of course, many of you know about this because you voted to have Massachusetts study this issue. The report that came back was comprehensive, clear, and compelling. Anyone who reads it in full comes away with the same impression: this needs to get fixed, and the sooner the better.
The difficulty is the federal law, which right now would only allow you to go into standard time, aligning you with Chicago for about two-thirds of the year.
Luckily, your staff has done the homework, and figured out how to thread the needle of legislation to get done what you want to do. In short, you petition the federal government to move into the Atlantic Time Zone, and then petition to stay in Standard Time year-round.
That’s a smart, legal solution, and you have the advantage of having a time zone to the east that doesn’t sound bad for Bay Staters. (I’m currently working with legislators in California, and they are having a hard time with the idea of moving out of the Pacific time zone and into the Mountain time zone anchored in my home state of Colorado.)
So in conclusion, thank you very much for your time and attention, and thank you for correcting Massachusetts’ ignoble place in DST history, and most of all thank you for doing your part to end the insanity of forcing your constituents to change clocks twice a year with no good reason at all.
First, welcome to our visitors from Europe, who had their “fall back” change this weekend. Did you enjoy that extra hour of sleep?
Sorry you’ll have to go home from work in the dark on Monday, but, you know… The FARMERS!
(Of course, the farmers in Europe, like the farmers here in the U.S., had nothing to do with making us switch to Daylight Saving Time or “Summertime” as you call it.)
And now we are in the weird part of the year where Europe and the U.S. are separated by an hour less than usual, something I talked about in March when I happened to be in Berlin for work.
About this site:
I’ve added a new link to the navigation bar, and it goes to a page that answers the question I get most often from people: How can I help?
They always say that for every one person who writes in to ask, there are 100 others that think the question, but don’t write in, so I wanted to make it easy.
If you are one of the 99, check out that page. The life you save may be your own!
I try to monitor the coverage about Daylight Saving Time. Usually the stories all look largely the same, but this year there’s a new category of stories thanks to the progress that’s been made in state legislatures around the country.
You see, many states have passed bills saying that they want to #LockTheClock and stop changing for Daylight Saving Time. But all of them have some caveat. They either are waiting for nearby states to also pass bills, or they are waiting for enabling legislation from the federal government. Or there is some other exception.
In any event, readers and viewers who missed the fine print and just read a headline from months ago that said, ”Daylight Saving Time Bill Signed By Governor” are just now realizing that they still have to change the clocks this year.
And they aren’t happy.
Hence the stories from all over the U.S. with a headline that is something like: “Yes, You Still Need To ‘Fall Back’ On Nov. 3.”
No fun for you, no fun for the reporters. Just no fun at all.
But change IS coming. The fact that those stories are needing to be written at all is a testament to the fact that bills are passing, even though the bills didn’t bring immediate relief. Before even that didn’t happen.
Change is coming, and even though this is an all-volunteer effort, this site is the place that will continue to keep you up to date and give you the best chance to be a part of the change that is coming because after five years of work on this, I’ve learned a lot about what actually moves things forward.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for caring about this issue!
Look, I get it. Daylight Saving Time is certainly not the most important issue out there.
As I write this, there are huge and really significant issues going on all over the globe, and I don’t want to take away from any of those.
But I’ve been working on this issue now for five years, and I can say that the science is now making it clear that this is not a novelty issue, this is a legitimate public health topic.
I hadn’t added much to my research page in recent months, even though it is one of the most popular pages on the site and is certainly the one that gets copied the most often. (Usually without credit, grumble grumble.)
And in adding to that page I discovered some new research from Germany that has answered a question I’ve had for a long time.
You see, I’d seen all the studies that showed heart attacks went up, strokes went up, etc. I’d read how traffic accidents were worse. The studies, however, didn’t go all the way. For instance the heart attack studies just looked at people who showed up at the hospital having had a myocardial infarction. They might have lived, the study didn’t say. What about the people who had a heart attack at home and died without even making it to the hospital?
In short, what I hadn’t seen was some researcher just look at the death records. I mean, I would think deaths would go up given all the other science, but I couldn’t actually say that the DST “spring forward” time change was an actual killer.
Now I can.
Photo by Daan Stevens on Unsplash
The research from Germany published in the International Journal of Legal Medicine looked at actual autopsy reports over a 10-year period.
The findings are clear. More deaths from heart attacks. More deaths from traffic accidents. Statistically significant, scientifically proven… death.
People dying specifically because we lose an hour of sleep artificially.
The cruel irony is that this study comes from Germany, the very country that’s the reason we have DST. It had been proposed, but not yet adopted, in the U.S. and England, before WWI. It was during that war that Germany adopted the clock-switching, and much of the rest of the world followed suit, and we’ve had some form of it ever since.
So, I really do get it. The whole debate can seem kind of frivolous given the really serious problems we have around the world. I have fun every year posting all the creative new memes that come out, and I’ll keep doing that. And it can be fun and slightly mind-warping to think about the very notion of time.
But the science is now clear. Changing clocks kills people every single year, and will keep killing people until we stop it.
