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.
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.
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.
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.
OK, we’re getting back into the busy season for #LockTheClock.
I know this blog has been a bit quiet, but in part that’s because I’ve been so busy behind the scenes. Some of the stuff I can talk about, and some I can’t. Not yet. But when I can… Boy Howdy! It’s going to be tremendously fantastically big.
Until then…
If you are just visiting for the first time, here’s what you need to know:
This is the official site for trying to do away with switching the clock in and out of Daylight Saving Time.
It’s not a full-time thing, there’s no money behind it, but it is a legitimate movement now. I’ve been working on it for five years on nights and weekends, and I can tell you for sure that we ARE making progress.
If you are a citizen and want to know what you can do to help, read this post.
If you want to write to tell me you just had a brilliant idea, that we should move the clock 30 minutes and call it a compromise, well, let’s just say you aren’t the first to have that idea. If you want to work on that for five years, contact hundreds of legislators, do tons of press, write scores of blog posts, and convince people it’s a good idea — go for it! Just don’t write to me and tell me about it.
If you just survived the switch into Daylight Saving Time in Australia or New Zealand (weirdly even those two friendly countries don’t switch on the same weekend), welcome! For the first time this year I noticed a huge uptick in visitors from Down Under.
I haven’t yet had too many visitors from Iran, but I learned from a Lyft driver (and confirmed it on the internet) that Iran switches into DST on the first day of Spring and out on the first day of Fall. It doesn’t matter if the equinoxes fall on a Saturday night or not, they just switch, even if it’s mid-week.
The official mutt of #LockTheClock watches the sun come up.
While I’m interested in other countries, I’m most interested in what’s happened recently in the European Union.
Europe to Beat the US to #LockTheClock?
The news out of Europe is that all the member states of the EU will be ending the clock-changing insanity, starting in 2021.
It’s not final yet, but if I can read the tea leaves of this official statement, it seems like a done deal.
This is fantastic news for all the regular reasons, but especially because it mirrors what I think is the best solution for us in the U.S.
<Begin DST Nerd section, skip over if you are sleepy.>
There is a lot of debate about if we should switch to permanent Standard Time (what we have in the winter) or permanent Daylight Saving Time.
Officially, the position of this movement is to not take a position. The only thing we are asking is to #LockTheClock, no more changing the clock twice per year.
More specifically, in a country as big and diverse as the United States, there’s no one, clear answer. All of the opinion polls say that people want more daylight later in the day when they can use it more. Most businesses want more daylight later, it’s better for golf and other recreation industries, as well as retail sales.
Also, there are just a lot of weird little exceptions. Eastern Oregon. Northern Idaho. Western Nebraska.
Two of our biggest states by population, Texas and Florida, have relatively small bits hanging out in a less-populous time zone to the west.
Also Arizona, which people think doesn’t participate in DST, except that a huge swath of the state still does in the Navajo Nation. Indiana and Michigan have some odd spots, and Kentucky and Tennessee are cut right in half.
Weirdly, if the U.S. was to adopt the European system, it would be the most American thing we could do. A big part of our history is leaving a lot of the governing up to the states. Congress could pass a law saying that we are going to match the Europeans and stop changing clocks in 2021, and each state would have until then to decide which time zone they’ll be in.
Some states won’t have much say. California will be in the Pacific, New York in the East. But some states could decide that they want to unify, or even move. Michigan and Indiana should be in the Central Time zone if a person were trying to draw somewhat straight lines. I’m not sure why they aren’t, but I would guess it has something to do with big business, even if big business did blame the farmers, the same way they’ve always done.
That’s the best approach to federal legislation, something I am lobbying for. I haven’t gotten there yet, but the fact that the current bill going through Congress seems to be dead may help the sponsors cast about for a new approach. I’m actively working on that right now.
<End DST Nerd section>
The good news is that compared to when I started working on this, I can see the momentum changing in the press inquiries I’m getting, the legislative interest, the visitors to this site, and more.
So, I know you won’t like changing the clock again this fall, even though this is the one where you get an extra hour of sleep. But you can get that sleep with a bit of comfort that the world of clock changing is slowly drifting away.
First, welcome to visitors just finding us after reading the excellent story on NBC News.
I wanted to write a quick post so that new visitors know that we are indeed very active here, just not as active during the summer. The lack of posts this summer is because of… summer… not because my activity is any less.
In fact, it’s been the busiest summer ever for the #LockTheClock movement.
Just recently, a state legislator from Utah made a presentation to the Council of State Governments, and it went really well! I’ll have more about that coming up on this blog, but in short we may have switched a state over.
Reach out to them by email, phone, social media, or show up to a town hall or whatever.
Ask them, politely, if they would be interested in doing something to help sleep-deprived constituents.
If yes, either present them with all the research on this site, or introduce them to me and I’ll take it from there.
I think the best way you can get something done is at the state level, with one exception: Mississippi.
It turns out that one guy from there, Sen. Roger Wicker, is single-handedly stopping federal legislation. There’s a nice bill with sponsors from both parties that’s currently stuck in the Commerce committee because Sen. Wicker won’t give it a hearing. Do you know him? Is he going to show up to an event in your town? If so, try to stop in and see him. I’ve been working on contacting him and so far it hasn’t gone well, but I don’t live in Mississippi. If you do, you could help a lot! (Contact me for more on how to do this if you are interested.)
It’s the weekend for the “Spring Forward” clock change in Europe. Everyone in all of the 28 member states set their clocks forward this weekend, and face the harsh reality of the alarm clock waking them up an hour earlier than their body is expecting on Monday morning.
(If you are in Europe, please think about going into work late on Monday, and #SleepInForSafety!)
And while we in the U.S. have hope that we will be able to #LockTheClock and stop changing our clocks twice per year, in Europe they have a solid plan, and 2021 is when the clock changing will end.
Now, I should be the first to say that this is not the most pressing issue in Europe right now. The Brexit issue is overwhelming, and the other issues like the Article 13 copyright rules are important and not to be dismissed.
That said, this Monday in Europe will see a spike in heart attacks, strokes, traffic accidents, etc. The list goes on and on. So it was proper for the European Parliament to take up this issue, and I was glad to see that it passed so handily, 410 to 192.
So the argument that we should do nothing because there are other things we should do (probably the most common argument I hear, right after “The Farmers” as a reason not to fix the clocks) did not carry the day.
And the parliament also did something that our U.S. Congress should take note of: They decided to give power to the individual countries. The year 2021 is the year that the clock-changing stops, and each country has until then to figure out what time zone it wants to stay in year-round.
(By the way, that is a PERFECT approach for the United States. Geography and parochial interests play a part in this discussion. What’s best for Maine may not be the best for Nevada.)
What really made me laugh in the arguments in Europe was a claim that somehow the Parliament wanted to be “Time Lords” by saying that we should not change the clocks twice per year.
“You would think they had other things to worry about without wanting to become time lords,” [John Flack] said, in an apparent reference to the BBC sci-fi drama Doctor Who.
So, right now the government makes us change clocks twice per year, but somehow ending that barbaric practice makes the government more of a Time Lord? I think it’s just the opposite.
As I told The New Yorker, the very concept of “time” is an agreement among people, just as is “government.” It seems like a good goal for both is to keep the health and safety of the people in mind first of all. If we know that changing clocks is bad for people — and we do — then stopping the practice of being a Time Lord twice per year is exactly the right thing for government to do.
So, good luck to my friends in Europe, especially those in England, where losing an hour of sleep seems like exactly the wrong thing at this perilous moment in history. Get as much sleep as you can, and know that we are all pulling for the right thing to happen for you with your government, and with your time, and we in the U.S. hope to follow your example and #LockTheClock.
Is the point at which Daylight Saving Time has reached its conclusion now all but inevitable?
I’d like to think so.
And how will we know what tipped it? Is that sort of thing knowable?
I mean, can we just call up Malcolm Gladwell and ask?
Hey, Malcolm, I know you figured out how Hush Puppies were not cool, and then at some point became cool, but did you know it at the time that the shoes past the Tipping Point? Are we there yet with getting rid of the clock changing twice a year?
It is something I’ve been thinking about a lot of late. Of course, we just passed one week since the change in the U.S., and my inbox was packed with lots of great news. (More on that below.)
I was in Berlin on business for the second half of the week, so had to experience some of that joy vicariously, but I did get to take a small jaunt out to find out about yet another problem with the clock changing.
If it is not clear, the part with the numbers rotates in the middle of the part that shows the 24 time zones. The time in Berlin was correct, but the time in New York, etc., showed 11:30 a.m., when it was actually 12:30 p.m. Because that center ring has just one hour for every time zone, there’s no way they could fix it.
Not the most important reason to fix Daylight Saving Time, (as it is called in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and a few others) and Summertime (in Europe), but it’s on the list, something that does not go unnoticed.
The good news is that there is lots of progress to report:
After my letter to the Michigan legislature, the committee there passed that bill out of committee, which is more than what happened when I went there in person! (Maybe they didn’t like my tie? More likely is that we have passed the Tipping Point, and Michigan doesn’t want to be left behind.)
New York had been looking at creating a study committee, following in the footsteps of Massachusetts that made a study last year. Well, now they have a bill that would skip the study and just put New York in Standard Time year-round, right now. Most people and most businesses say that they’d like to stay in Daylight Time year-round, but I’ve heard rumblings that the broadcast networks don’t like that. They want it to be dark out so everyone will go inside and sit on the couch and turn on the TV. The guy who is sponsoring the bill lives about as far away from New York City as a guy can live, in Niagara Falls, so who knows?
In Oregon, the governor said not just “yes” but “Hell, Yes” to the idea of year-round Daylight Saving Time.
Also from Oregon, the state’s senior senator, Ron Wyden, said publicly that he will support Marco Rubio’s bill to allow states to go to year-round DST right now. That’s big. Wyden is a Democrat, and we need bipartisan support for this thing to move forward.
A bunch of other states, including Utah where I’ve been working with legislators for years, got bills further through the process than they’ve ever gone before.
I don’t know what a tipping point smells like, but this sure smells like we are getting close to the end for changing the clocks!
#LockTheClock!
By the way, I haven’t sent out an email yet using my new tool. I won’t send one out for every post, maybe every handful of posts. If you would like to get on that list, you can do that here.
For instance, I once compiled a bunch of research, but then kept adding to it in various blog posts. Then I finally had the brilliant idea that should have come to me two years earlier: Just make a single page that has all the best research about DST.
That makes it easier when I discover yet another study showing that driving in the dark after work is more deadly than in the morning, I can just add it to the page.
Idaho on Line 3
It is also getting easier because instead of me calling legislators and trying to get them to take this issue seriously, I have legislators calling me, asking for advice, wanting research, model language, and just support. That is fun, and I wish I wasn’t so busy fixing fake news to be able to spend more time doing that.
But I can find some time, and was happy to get to testify in Connecticut recently.
It was great being there, and for those of you who (gasp!) don’t watch the whole thing, you should know that me being there may have helped broker a compromise that will help the bill pass, and help get the concept moving forward in Connecticut.
One small example: I’ve been working with a legislator in Wyoming for years, a very humble guy. He’s the opposite of the saying up there: “All hat, no cattle.”
In the past his bill died unceremoniously and quickly. This year his bill made it out of the House and came one vote away in the Senate. One vote! We’ll be back and get that one vote next year.
Getting the word out
The media has always been great about calling. Probably the highlight for me so far has been an interview with the New Yorker, but there could be a new highlight coming up soon. Stay tuned for that!
But I’m always happy to help local reporters around the country, and I always seem to be getting up extra extra early on the one day that I’d like to sleep in to do radio interviews.
The hard part of trying to fix Daylight Saving Time is that it hasn’t happened yet. It was totally clear five years ago that this needed to end, and yet nothing happened.
It was still clear four years ago, but that’s when a handful of states started taking this seriously.
Three years ago when a California legislator passed a resolution based on what I had written, that was awesome, but it did not create the tidal wave I was hoping.
Two years ago when politics seemed so broken after Brexit and Trump, I actually had some hope that fixing DST might be a way to move the conversation forward. It wasn’t.
Last year saw a huge number of bills going through state legislatures, and at the end of the year saw California voters overwhelmingly pass a measure to try to fix all this.
But this year, once again, the clocks will move forward. Once again the alarm clock on that Monday after will seem like an insult piled on a historical travesty.
And next year will probably be the same.
But still, I have hope. Things really are getting better, it’s just that I am only one person, and I don’t have a big business coalition behind me. That is fine, and maybe even better in the big picture because it is clear this is a genuine initiative, not something created in a soulless conference room somewhere.
It may not come this year, but it is coming. It is a rebellion, and those are built on hope, so I’m told.
The 2019 legislative season is shaping up to be the busiest ever in the fight to #LockTheClock and fix Daylight Saving Time for good.
So busy and so hot, in fact, that it’s making me lose sleep.
Do you have a trick when you can’t sleep? I do. I listen to an audio book. The trick for me is to find one that is boring enough that it lulls you to sleep, but not so boring that your mind wanders instead of listening.
I was trying to fall back asleep in the wee hours this morning, so I listened to a book about the Middle Ages. I came in at a section about Magellan.
He was, of course, the Portuguese sailor who was the first to sail from the old world around the new world, and then back home going west the whole way. He was the first to circumnavigate the planet, importantly around the bottom of South America where the straits are now named for him.
(Well, his expedition made it around the world, anyway. He didn’t personally make it, having run afoul of some native chiefs on a Pacific island unhappy with how the sailors were taking advantage of the native women.)
He set out with five ships and 270 men. One ship and 18 men made it back to Europe, and when they got home they had lots to tell about things that had never been seen by Europeans before, including penguins and bananas.
And they also noticed something strange: Although they had kept meticulous logs of their days away, their calendar was off by one day from the calendars kept in Europe.
This was the first group to circumnavigate the planet, proving that it was round, something that had been theorized by people going back to the ancient Greeks.
But none of those theories, and none of the astronomers or big thinkers of the day had figured out the need for an International Date Line. It took actually sailing around the world to make clear the need for that.
No Date Line?
Just to be clear, the planet spun on its axis for eons with no need for an International Date Line. That line was only needed so that as people who kept calendars traveled around the world, they could all keep in synch. The idea of the calendar, and the need to keep it in synch with other calendars, is entirely a human invention.
So it is with time zones. I’ve written about this before, and the history is clear on this. We have time zones because as the trains started zipping across the land, we had a need for uniform times. No longer could the time be set by the one guy in town who set the town clock and looked up at the sun to decide when it was noon.
That’s why time zones are controlled in the U.S. by the Department of Transportation.
Time Zones Kill
With all that in mind, I’m now volunteering to help legislators from around the country (when I can spare the time from my day job of fixing fake news.)
With all of them, I share the research. I talk about the politics (including the story of the legislator in Arizona who tried to start changing the clock twice a year and was so overwhelmed with angry constituent response that he held a press conference to announce he was killing his own bill.)
And the bigger message that I try to share with all of them is just this: The very notion of “time” is just an agreement among people. Shouldn’t we strive to live in a world where such an agreement does not kill people?
I mean, imagine this scenario:
Bob: Hey, Ralph, want to get lunch? Say 1 p.m.?
Ralph: Well, I’d love to get lunch, but if we do it at 1, there’s a chance I’ll have a heart attack and die. Can we do it at 12:30 instead?
Bob: No way.
Ralph: Why not?
Bob: The farmers.
People who have looked into the issue (and fans of John Oliver) know that the farmers have nothing to do with Daylight Saving Time, and never have, except as a giant PR stunt and a scapegoat.
No, the reason we are forced to change clocks twice a year is, well, inertia. We do it because that’s what we do.
All the science, all of it, says that changing clocks is a bad idea, and yet we keep doing it.
But with the flurry of activity in the state legislatures here in the U.S., and in the European Parliament, and the vote by the people of California, it is becoming clear that the clock is ticking for mindless clock-changing.
And it can’t come soon enough. It will be too late for Magellan, but it’s not too late for us.
OK, sorry. The headline is a small play on the fact that New Hampshire is the Granite State.
I am a huge fan of New Hampshire. My most famous relative lived there for decades, and donated her home and some acreage to the state, and it is now a lovely and quaint state park.
Our children will have more time after school to hike the Shieling Forest in Peterborough if we have Daylight Time year-round. Photo from this FB Group.
She wrote that book after being inspired by a headstone she discovered on a walk through Jaffrey, New Hampshire. It read:
Sacred to the memory of Amos Fortune who was born free in Africa a slave in America he purchased liberty professed Christianity lived reputably and died hopefully Nov. 17, 1801 Aet. 91
With just that, she went to the state librarian in Concord and researched as much as she could about him, and then wrote a piece of historical fiction that was so lyrical, touching and powerful that it was awarded the top U.S. prize for youth fiction, the Newbery Medal for 1951.
A slave to the clock?
What does this have to do with Daylight Saving Time?
Perhaps just this: As the saying goes, “The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice.”
I wouldn’t presume to say that fixing daylight saving time is the most important social justice issue of our time, or the most significant freedom and states-rights topic of the day… but it is a real issue.
It wasn’t, of course, in Amos Fortune’s day. Clocks back then were set to a town clock, and that was set by someone in the town figuring out when the sun was most straight overhead.
After the train came through, train conductors wanted synchronized time, so the Department of Transportation took over the regulation of time, and does so to this day.
When my great aunt Elizabeth Yates was a small girl, there was no DST, just Eastern Time. When we entered W.W. I, we started switching the clocks twice a year to stay in synch with the Brits, who themselves did it to stay in synch with the Germans. Why the Germans did it is a matter of some controversy.
As a country we Locked The Clock as soon as the war was over, and then we started switching twice a year again in W.W. II.
(Notice that “The Farmers” are not part of that history. They were not, and never have been and anyone who says they are is just repeating fake news.)
Why are we talking about DST?
Life in New Hampshire is just so much better than it was in the old days. People aren’t enslaved, and don’t have to purchase their own freedom. If you get influenza, you probably won’t die — that wasn’t the case 100 years ago.
So the things that we have to fix these days seem, perhaps, a bit prosaic, compared to the days when we did things like send a teacher into space, as we did with the great New Hampshire citizen Christa McAuliffe, God rest her soul.
But historians like Ken Burns of New Hampshire know that sometimes even small things can mean a lot.
So, what is this small thing we are fixing?
It’s the clock. Twice a year the government makes us change it. Why? It really isn’t the farmers. We change it, basically, because that is what we have done for as long as most people alive can remember.
And while it won’t save as many lives as George Whipple, (born in Grafton County, he’s the guy who figured out how to keep people from dying from anemia) fixing DST will save lives.
How? The research is very clear that the spring-forward change is deadly.
In a state as far north as New Hampshire, jolting an entire populace awake an hour before their bodies are ready for it causes traffic accidents, heart attacks, strokes, epileptic seizures, workplace accidents. Even judges are more harsh in their sentencing.
Worried about school kids going to school in the dark? Well, kids don’t die from that, and if the legislature wants to take up the idea of starting school a bit later, I’m sure you’ll have kids and families fully behind you.
The thing we actually need to be worried about these days is childhood obesity. The experts there tell us that another hour of daylight after school gives kids that much more time to play outside, not sitting inside looking at a device.
Regarding House Bill 567
Now, it is the case that it would be pretty disruptive for New Hampshire to be out of synch with Massachusetts and Maine. That’s why the bill being considered now smartly is following the trend of other bills around the country that say states should move as a group.
It’s very good planning to pass this measure right now. I hate to be the one to point this out, but Massachusetts may not be as neighborly, and could just pass a bill to #LockTheClock and not pay attention to if other nearby states are going to do it or not.
If New Hampshire passes this bill right now, you’ll know that you’ll be set if your noisy neighbor to the south takes action.
And there’s a good chance Massachusetts will act. They performed an excellent service for the whole country by really researching the topic in depth. The report they issued after interviews with the best experts is that staying on Daylight Time year-round is the best overall for everyone.
The panel also recommended that Massachusetts move to year-round DST in coordination with other New England states, but that could just end up being Connecticut and Rhode Island.
So this bill is the exact right solution at the exact right time.
Passing this bill will follow in the tradition of my great aunt, Amos Fortune, and so many other great residents of New Hampshire to lead on an important issue, and not just wait for the rest of the New England states to act first and then play catch-up.
New Hampshire has a proud tradition of going first in the nation with the primaries. Passing this bill will give New Hampshire a chance to also go first in bringing some sanity to the government’s mandate of us moving the clock around twice a year.
This is the fifth legislative session that I’ve been paying attention to the Daylight Saving Time issue, and I can tell already that this one is going to be huge.
The quality and thoughtfulness of the bills is great, and the quantity seems much greater for the first couple weeks of January than I can ever remember.
To what do we owe this surge?
The overwhelming victory in California was certainly part of it. The vote was technical, obtuse, and didn’t offer immediate relief from clock-changing madness, and still it passed with more than 60 percent of the vote. I give credit to the farmers and the housewives. 😉
Also perhaps is the moves the European Union is making to scrap what they call “Summer Time.”
And it may have been Florida, which passed into law the notion that if the feds ever fix the national law, Florida would very much like to just move to permanent DST. One of the U.S. Senators from that state, wanting to catch up to the people he’s leading, immediately said that he would try to fix the federal law. So far all we’ve seen on that front is a press release, but at least that’s more than we had before! (I’ve decided not to grumble too much that the research in the press release from Rubio’s office shares more than just a passing resemblance to the research page on my site. A thank you card might have been nice.)
Other than that, there’s no single thing. The notion that we should #LockTheClock is just catching on.
Legislation getting smarter
And legislators are getting smarter about how to pass bills. For instance, in Wyoming and Connecticut, legislators are proposing that they go to permanent Daylight Saving time (which, for reasons that have to do with the intractability of federal law, involve moving themselves one time zone to the east and then declaring themselves on Standard time year round.) But both of those bills say their state should do it only if neighboring states join in. That’s a solid idea that has been floated around the country before, and may help those bills get passed.
New Mexico had come very close to passing a really smart bill that would have done things properly, but that bill died an ignoble death. I saw it, it wasn’t pretty.
As a guy who’s been working this issue for a long time now, I have some institutional history. So one of the things I need to do is try to contact the sponsor of the new bill in New Mexico, a guy named Bobby Gonzales, and encourage him to talk to Cliff Pirtle. They are in opposite chambers and opposing parties, but if there ever was an issue that is nonpartisan, it’s this one.
Maybe Bobby can do what Cliff could not do, in spite of his truly amazing beard, and that is to convince Gail Chasey that fixing DST is not some Nixonian plot, as she currently thinks it is.
(Yes, it will make you cynical, but one person really can thwart the will of the people, and in New Mexico that one person is Gail Chasey.)
Working together, we can make this work
If you are a legislator with a Daylight Saving Time bill, or if you are just thinking about one, drop me a line. I’m happy to talk to you privately, to come and testify, to do whatever it takes to help you.
Although there are not a lot of lobbyists working on this issue, there are a few that can crop up, especially from the golf industry. I can let you know what their interests are, and how you can work with them so they won’t fight you, and instead work to help you.
…
If you are a citizen, why not contact your local legislator? They always love hearing from real constituents. Well, almost always. They for sure will like it on this issue.
If you aren’t sure who that is, just look them up here. Then contact them and say that you really don’t think we should be changing the clocks twice a year for a bunch of reasons backed by research.
If you do that, and get a good response, let me know about it and I’ll highlight it on this blog.
If you happen to live in a state that has a bill on DST working this year (you can find them here) then for sure contact your own legislators AND the sponsors, and tell them how glad you are they are working on a bill to fix this.
And one word of advice: Let’s say the bill in your state is to move the state permanently to standard time, and not daylight time as you’d prefer. I say that you should still support that bill because if we can make ANY change, we can show that change can happen. Let’s get the ball rolling on change first, and then get it exactly right after that.
Editor’s note: Today we hear from a guest author, someone who contacted me asking about the 10th Amendment implications of Daylight Saving Time. It was immediately clear that he knew more about this than me, so I asked him to write this post. I hope you find it as helpful as I did. – Scott
Many of us were taught in school that the federal government is the top of the authority hierarchy with the states next in line, and finally city and county government at the bottom. This simplified view of things likely comes from a phrase in the U.S. Constitution often referred to as the supremacy clause. Article VI, clause 2 of the Constitution reads, “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”
The key words that many people overlook are, “…which shall be made in Pursuance thereof…” So, only laws made in pursuance of, or consistent with, the Constitution are the supreme law of the land.
The 10th Amendment makes it clear that the federal government’s authority is described in its entirety within the Constitution and that anything not included there remains the province of the the states and the people: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
The federal government is, therefore, one of enumerated powers—it may exercise control over only those matters that the states and the people have explicitly delegated to it.
We all know that’s not the practical reality of 21st century America. The federal government does thousands of things everyday it has not been granted authority to do. The usual response is to bring a law suit and have the courts decide whether a law is legitimate but think about that for a moment—why would the people, who have delegated limited authority to the federal government, turn to that same government to ask if what it is doing is OK? It’s like asking your children to “interpret” their own bed time!
The U.S. Constitution does not delegate authority to the federal government to regulate time but that didn’t stop Congress from passing a variety of laws governing how we set our clocks, including the Uniform Time Act of 1966 and the Standard Time Act of 1918.
Since these laws purport to govern something that is outside of Congressional authority, does that invalidate them? According to U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall in Marbury v. Madison (1803), “…an act of the legislature repugnant to the Constitution is void.”
What would happen if a state or group of states decided that they did not want to use daylight savings time? Or decided to use it year-round? What recourse would the federal government have? Even if it went to court to try to force those states to comply with the Uniform Time Act how could such a decision be enforced?
It turns out the Supreme Court has already weighed in on the issue, albeit indirectly. In no fewer than four decisions, the Court has made it clear the the federal government cannot force states to carry out a federal law. The federal government has to enforce its own laws since the resources of the states cannot be “commandeered” by the federal government to execute its laws, a legal concept that has become known as the “anti-commandeering principle.”
In the case of Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842), Justice Joseph Story held that the federal government could not force states to implement the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793. In New York v. United States (1992), [regarding hazardous waste regulations] Sandra Day O’Conner wrote for the majority: “…Congress may not simply commandee[r] the legislative processes of the States by directly compelling them to enact and enforce a federal regulatory program.”
In Printz v. United States (1997), sheriffs Jay Printz and Richard Mack sued over implementation of the Brady background checks; the court held, “The Federal Government may neither issue directives requiring the States to address particular problems, nor command the States’ officers, or those of their political subdivisions, to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program…such commands are fundamentally incompatible with our constitutional system of dual sovereignty.” And in Independent Business v. Sebelius (2012), the Court held that the federal government cannot force the states to act against their will by withholding funds in a coercive manner. Chief Justice John Roberts argued that allowing Congress to essentially punish states that refused to go along violates the constitutional separation of powers.
So where does all this leave us with respect to daylight savings time? Since the federal government has no authority to regulate the measurement of time and it cannot force the states to carry out federal laws, the states simply need to, in the words of the principle author of the Constitution, James Madison, “refuse to cooperate with officers of the union.” Stop changing time twice a year. It’s that simple. Do our state legislatures have the backbone to make it happen through their own legislation? That remains to be seen.
For more information about the anti-commandeering principle, visit the Tenth Amendment Center. TAC has made great progress on a wide variety of projects all based on anti-commandeering and related legal concepts, such as the nullification of marijuana laws, the use of gold & silver as legal tender, putting an end to militarization of police forces, civil asset forfeiture reform, and many other issues where the federal government oversteps its legal authority.
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Michael Gibbs is the deputy director of the Arizona Tenth Amendment Center
I totally understand that this is not the biggest headline of the 2018 midterm elections, but we’ve got big, BIG news from the Golden State: Proposition 7 won by a huge margin.
Thanks to freaking clock-changing, I’m still getting up before 5 a.m. Denver time, so the first thing I did was check the California results and they look great. As of 4 a.m. in California, 91 percent of the vote is in and the Yes side has just a tick short of 60 percent of the vote.
This does not mean that California will get to stop changing in and out of DST right away (there are still a few more steps including a change to federal law).
Here is how it does help:
That margin is HUGE.
While there have been totally unscientific polls about the popularity of DST clock changing, and the memes run dramatically against the clock-changing, we’ve never had any solid data showing how people really feel.
Now we do.
I know it would be easy to say that California is really different than the rest of the country on this issue, but that’s just not the case. Politics is a part of this conversation, of course, but what I’ve seen first-hand is that this is not a partisan issue. Most of the state bills around the country trying to fix this are carried by Republicans, but then after they are introduced they get wide bipartisan support.
There will be much more on this blog in the future, but for now I just want to say thank you to the voters of California. We are now one step closer to ending the clock-changing insanity forever!
It’s been clear to readers of this blog that for years public sentiment has been on the side #LockTheClock — ending clock changing for Daylight Saving Time — but the evidence has been a bit scattered and anecdotal.
Californians get to vote on Proposition 7 — The Permanent Daylight Saving Time Measure — and we’ll finally have some clear data to show to the world about how the public feels about this issue.
Now, it can be a bit confusing figuring out exactly what this proposition is, and the proposition doesn’t actually do a whole lot. It basically sets some governmental wheels in motion that may lead to an end to the clock changing.
But what it can do for sure is let lawmakers in California and around the world know exactly how popular it is to have the government force all of us to get all goofed up twice a year.
So, what are some of the pros and cons of voting on Prop 7?
Pros – Reasons to vote Yes on Prop 7
Let politicians know that you are watching.
Send a message to farmers that you know that farmers have ALWAYS been against DST clock changing, and you support them and you like eating.
Let the world know that science and research should drive our decisions about how we set the clocks, not “That’s the way we’ve always done it”-ism.
Give yourself a little hope that government can get something right.
Put California in the spot of leading on this issue, something that Florida is trying to steal away. Of course, Arizona, Hawaii and Puerto Rico are already way ahead of everyone on this one.
Great way to vote for something that will not cause a big fight with your crazy uncle who lives in [insert Michigan, or wherever he lives here] on Facebook.
It’s lucky Number 7!
Cons – Reasons to vote No on Prop 7
You like suddenly having to go home from work in the dark on the Monday after the “Fall Back” time change.
You enjoy that groggy feeling on the Monday morning after the “Spring Forward” time change.
You think it’s best to be on the losing side of history.
You think Kaiser Wilhelm got a bad wrap in WWI in Germany, and you want to see his legacy live on.
You enjoy figuring out how to reset the clock in the car, and on the microwave.
You want California to be known as the state that votes for crazy stuff, not stuff that people actually want.
So, there you have it.
If you live in California, tell all your friends and relatives to vote yes on this one, and if you don’t, this would be a great time to keep in touch with your California pals and tell them to vote yes to make the whole world a better place.
Editor’s note: Is something going on with DST? Suddenly my inbox is packed, lots of requests for interviews, etc.
Oh, yeah!
I’m on the road today, but will be back in Denver tonight and will try to get one of my own blog posts up soon, with highlights of all the action this year.
But for now, here’s another guest post, and a fun one at that. – Scott
by Ron Halvorson
Ron Halvorson
It seemed like summer hadn’t even started when June 21 rolled around and the days began to shorten. By September I got that all-too-familiar feeling in the pit of my stomach: eternal darkness is imminent. All hope is lost.
Oregon’s winter months are tough enough for those of us who suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder. We don’t need any added aggravation, but that’s what the biannual time change is, an added aggravation – especially in the fall.
True, setting the clock back doesn’t decrease the actual amount of daylight in the day, but when your clock says 4:30 p.m. and it’s already dark, it certainly feels that way. Add to that the emotional and physiological effects just from disrupting your body’s routine; one has to wonder if changing the clock is worth it. I say it’s not.
A few weeks ago, as I pondered my impending fate, I had a brilliant thought: “What’s to keep me from not changing?” Just because everyone else does it doesn’t mean I have to. Imagine how great it would be to cruise through the time change like nothing happened, because for me, it didn’t.
Credit: Photo by Hao Zhang on Unsplash
How would this look? The most obvious challenge is that everyone else would be operating in one time zone while I would be in another. So what? As a retiree I don’t have that many scheduled activities throughout the day. I would just have to make sure that when there was a meeting time, for example, I changed it to an hour later to fit my personal time zone. If for some reason I muffed it, at least I wouldn’t be late because I’d be an hour early.
Sundays would be great as instead of rising for our “too-early” church meeting at 9:30 a.m., we would go at 10:30. This would be much more reasonable, especially for my night-owl wife, who has agreed to try this tack with only a little reluctance. My challenge will be to make sure she doesn’t “fall back” anyway, in spite of what the clocks say, just to stay up later!
For the first time in my life I’m excited about the upcoming time change because I will refuse to participate, and I’m eager to see how this is going to work out. I wonder if others are doing this as well.
Maybe this will start a movement. Who’s to keep the populace of an entire state or even nation from doing this if they choose to? Obviously this wouldn’t bring relief to someone with a regular day job who abhorred coming home in the dark. They’d still be at the mercy of their employer’s schedule.
At the very least I’ll get to nurture my rebellious side.
Because I’ve been leading the charge against Daylight Saving Time clock-changing for years now, I sometimes lose track of the fact that misperceptions about the ridiculous practice still outweigh the truth.
I think if someone with a big budget took a poll, they’d find that a majority of people think we change the clocks twice per year because of “the farmers.”
If you stop and think about it, it’s ridiculous. Everything about agriculture has changed in the last 100 years, and somehow we still change clocks because of what farmers wanted in 1918?
Why do we think “The Farmers” wanted DST?
Simple. It was a PR job. One of the greatest PR con jobs in history.
You see, the guy who ran the biggest department store in Boston decided that people would shop more if they had more time in the daylight after work to shop.
He wasn’t wrong. A study done in this century is clear that more daylight does encourage people to get out of the home more and shop.
But in those days he couldn’t come out and say that he wanted to change the clocks to make more money for himself, so he came up with a plan: Say “the farmers” want it.
It was brilliant! Everyone had a nostalgic love of the farmers just at the start of the trend of people migrating off the farms and into the cities.
So, Lincoln Filene (who’s namesake store exists to this day as Filene’s Basement) had a bunch of what can only be described as Fake News created. His team wrote that fruit was healthier when harvested with the dew still on it.
The reality was that it sucked for farmers. In those days dairy farmers milked cows and delivered the fresh milk to stores and homes at the start of the day. This meant they had to get up even earlier relative to the sun.
The Filene team even ran the equivalent in those days of a social media campaign, creating post cards that constituents could send in to Congress.
While that PR effort did help, it wasn’t until WW1 that we actually started observing Daylight Saving Time, then called, “War Time” as a way of staying in synch with the British, who started doing it because the Germans did it.
So as John Oliver correctly points out: You lost an hour of sleep because of Kaiser Wilhelm.
But it’s not just kids goofing around with meme-makers. Questions about DST are creeping into all parts of our culture, including this gem from the Cartoon Network:
If kids grow up knowing from cartoons that changing the clocks around is a “completely pointless practice” then I know that it’s just a matter of time before we fix it, sort of like gay marriage and gun laws.
Well, be sure to check out that original collection, but here are some new additions that are worthy of a look or a share here in the 100th year of DST in the United States. Enjoy!
In the year 1918, you were twice as likely to die from the flu as from heart disease. Now in 2018 it’s 10 times more likely that your heart will kill you than the flu, and life expectancy is decades longer.
In 1918 there was certainly no internet, and no television. Some of the rich had radio in their homes, but it was very rare, in part because so few homes even had electricity.
Only about one family in 50 had a car.
In 1918 one thing started, however, that we still have today: Daylight Saving Time.
One other thing started that year that we also still have today: Hatred of Daylight Saving Time.
Brief History of Daylight Saving Time
The widespread belief, still, is that we have DST because of the farmers. That may be one of the biggest PR fabrications of all time, a total lie that persists now, 100 years later.
The truth is that a retailer in Boston, Filene’s, wanted people to have more time to shop after work. So they hired a PR firm to come up with a rationale. If they just told people it was to make more money for Filene’s, well, that wouldn’t work. (It was true then, and it’s true now, that more daylight later in the day leads to more shopping.)
So they announced a “study” showing that “the farmers” wanted DST, completely making up a bunch of total crap about fruit having more nutrition when picked with the morning dew still on it. People believed it then, and still do today.
The truth is that farmers always hated it. In those days dairy farmers would actually milk cows and deliver the milk to people that same day, before it could go bad. (See above about a lack of electricity, and there certainly were no refrigerated trucks. Pasteurization wouldn’t be mandatory in the US until 1947.) So, DST meant farmers had to get up even earlier in the middle of the night.
(Now most farmers don’t care, but DST still screws the milk producers. Cows are milked on a timed schedule, so for two weeks a year production gets thrown off because the cows don’t know why the milking is off by an hour.)
All of that doesn’t actually even matter that much, because that’s not why the US adopted Daylight Saving Time.
Why did we start?
My theory is that it was all a way to distract a population.
And — foreshadowing — that’s why we still have it.
World War I and Daylight Saving Time
The real reason we started in the US was to keep in synch with the British during the war, and the reason the Brits switched was to keep in pace with the Germans.
Why did the Germans switch? The reason given at the time was that it would save on fuel oil, much needed during the war.
That theory is largely accepted today, but I’m calling BS on that. Very few homes in Germany were heated with fuel oil in 1917, and those that were couldn’t get any fuel oil anyway.
The winter of 1917 was what’s called the “Turnip Winter.” In those days people didn’t eat turnips because… well… for obvious reasons. They were grown only because they were a cheap way to make food for cows and pigs.
But in that winter, all the meat was sent to the troops, so the people in Germany were reduced to eating turnips.
To distract the population, the government came up with A PLAN! The plan was to change the clocks by an hour in the winter.
There’s no evidence that changing the clocks did save any fuel oil, by the way.
Once the Germans changed, the Brits did, and then we in the U.S. did, too, for the rest of WWI.
When the war was over, politicians here in the US didn’t want to do continue to piss off the third of the population of voters that worked on farms, so it was scrapped. Our country had no mandate to change clocks twice per year until after Pearl Harbor.
Modern History of Daylight Saving Time
With a similar lack of science but an abundance of Do Everything Possible To Win The War, we switched to “War Time” for the years of the war.
The war changed so much of our society, with suburbs, science, medicine and all the rest, that my hunch is that we kept DST sort of as a nod to the fact that farmers really didn’t matter any more. We needed to keep the modern and nuclear age version of how we kept time.
The problem, of course, is that people hated it. So local politicians responded to the people by switching into or out of DST based on what they thought people wanted. From after the war to the early 1960s there were hundreds of different local DST moves at a state or local level.
So, the US Congress stepped in and created the Uniform Time Act of 1966, just two years shy of the 50th birthday of DST in the US. That Act took away nearly all of the ability of local jurisdictions to make up their own minds about what time zone to be in. You could either stay in Standard time year-round, or you got with the system, Bub.
Arizona, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico all decided to stay in Standard Time, but all the rest have stayed in clock-changing uniformity, as literally required by federal law.
One change of note came in 1974, right in the middle of Watergate. President Nixon thought it would be a good idea to go back to Daylight Saving Time in January. Just as with the Germans in 1917, the announced reason was to save energy, but the real reason was to distract people from Watergate.
Maybe if everyone is sleep-deprived, they’ll forget about Watergate.
Nixon probably never said that, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he thought it.
Everyone hated a sudden change to the clocks in the middle of the winter, and it didn’t distract anyone. Nixon resigned in August of that year, and Congress went back to the old style of Daylight Saving Time that fall.
And because of that, New Mexico was blocked from fixing the situation in 2017. No kidding.
What can you do today to #LockTheClock and fix DST?
If you are one of the vast majority of people who hate changing clocks twice per year, there is something that you can do.
I’m a citizen.
Awesome. You hold the power. Begin talking about this to anyone and everyone. Read more on this blog. Share the #LockTheClock hashtag.
In short, let everyone know that we really don’t have to go through this insanity twice per year.
I’m a state legislator.
If you are here, you’ve probably already figured out that your options are limited. You know that you can’t just change your state into year-round DST because of the federal law, and a big pile of lobbyists from golf, retail, recreation and more will fight you if you try to take away the sunshine from summer afternoons and evenings and go to standard time year-round.
There’s one very narrow window that might work.
If your state is all in one time zone now, and
If you are on the Eastern border of your time zone.
If both of those things are true you might be able to choose to move one time zone to the east, and then take the legal option to stay in standard time year round.
That way you can do what the people want, which is year-round DST, even though it seems a little funny legislatively.
(New Mexico tried to do that, only to have the bill die on the last day of the session last year because of… wait for it… Watergate. True Story.)
The reason I say you might be able to move one time zone to the east is that the law hasn’t really been tested. You should for sure try it, and let the feds tell you that you can’t. “States rights” and “power reserved to the states” etc.
Chances are you can’t really fix it for your state alone, so what I recommend is passing a resolution. California did it with broad, bi-partisan support, and you can do it, too. If enough states pass that resolution, that will go a long way to getting Congress to fix it.
I’m a teacher.
First, thanks for all you do.
When the spring-forward clock change comes, it would be a perfect time to do a science unit. Have students run an experiment on how hard robbing people of an hour of sleep is. Then take those results and deliver them to your state legislator. Sounds like an interdisciplinary dream unit!
Is this the year we end DST?
I see many hopeful signs. The study committee in Massachusetts did great work. There’s a raft of proposed legislation coming again this year.
The problem, as I’ve written, really is Trump. Just as Watergate was both the reason for the last big change to DST and the reason that it hasn’t changed again in the last 40 years, I don’t want to have another DST change now as a distraction from the current Trump-Russia situation.
So — and it breaks my heart to say this — I actually do not think this will be the year for the change. There’s just too much else going on.
That being said, we can and should do all we can. See what I wrote above. If you are a teacher, dive in! The kids will love it. If you are a citizen, make some noise! If you are a legislator, propose a resolution or a study committee.
This scourge of Daylight Saving Time is bad, and while it would be poetic and lovely for it to end in its 100th year, I want to make sure that when we kill it, it stays dead forever.
With the fall-back weekend here, this blog is getting lots of activity and I’m getting lots of requests for interviews, along with e-mails from fellow #LockTheClock citizens, etc.
To make it easy for everyone, here’s a quick FAQ:
I hate changing the clocks twice per year, what can I do?
But we can work at the state level. I recommend you find your state legislators, and contact them. Do it now, while most of them are not in session. They’ll be happy to hear from you. Then show them this page, and recommend that they try to pass a resolution.
I have an idea that will fix everything! Will you take my idea and run with it?
No.
Sorry, but I get lots of emails from people who think they are the first person in the world to come up with the idea that we just move the clocks 30 minutes, or whatever. This is a complex problem, and there are no simple solutions.
Also, I come from the world of startups. What I’ve learned is that ideas are easy, doing the work to get an idea out there in the world is hard. This is a hard problem that will take years to fix.
I saw a funny meme once about DST. Have you seen it?
My friend in Europe said they changed their clocks a couple of weeks ago. Why are we behind?
It will make you cynical, but the reason is The Swamp. Lobbyists from the candy industry gave a basket of candy to members of congress, and they extended DST until after Halloween for the safety of the children (and so they would have more time for trick-or-treating.)
Can’t I sign a petition or something?
You can. At last check there were 62 different petitions just on change.org. You could also just scream into a pillow. That one might make you feel better.
Look, change is hard, as they say. It’s coming, but it’s going to take a while. So:
This spring, in the weeks before and after the time change, I did a bunch to try to #LockTheClock and stop the twice-annual insanity of changing in and out of Daylight Saving Time.
Then I got busy with the other parts of my life.
Well, I recently decided to step back and analyze the whole effort. Every bit. Every assumption, every hope, every idea.
What would the world be like after all of us join together to end the insanity?
I realized that so far, my efforts have all been in vain.
Take a look:
I testified in four states (the photo is from my testimony in Michigan with the incomparable Rep. Peter Lucido.) In all four states, the bills died.
More research comes out every month or so showing the dangers of DST clock changing, and still we are stuck with it.
Failure like that would make a lot of people… well… give up.
But, I’m an entrepreneur. Startups are the one place where failure is OK. Celebrated even.
I will not, however, keep doing the same things in the same ways, so that’s why I went back to the basics.
From that exercise, with some key help, I figured out two things:
My underlying plan needs an overhaul, and…
I need to make it easier for people to connect to this.
As for my underlying plan, I will let you know how that develops. I’m actually going to visit the heart of the matter, the Department of Transportation in Washington D.C. That’s where the Uniform Time Act is administered, and that’s the place with the people who understand the law better than anyone. I need to go there, and learn.
From that, I’ll come out with a new plan that works better on a technical level.
After that, the next job will be to find a way to make what can work on a technical level work on an emotional level as well.
There’s no question that many people feel the pain of DST clock changing, and aren’t afraid to express it in memes, videos, cartoons, articles and more. You can find all those on this blog.
But it hasn’t been enough. We haven’t yet reached the Tipping Point.
So, keep in touch and be sure to follow us on whatever social media is your thing to be able to learn how we’re going to be able to move forward.
I talk to people about Daylight Saving Time all the time, probably more than any other human on earth.
When I do, however, I always have to be careful, because everyone has an opinion about it, and they often sound conflicting, when really they aren’t.
For instance, what does it mean when someone says they are against Daylight Saving Time?
It could mean that they like it to be darker — relative to the time on the clocks — earlier in the summer. It could mean that they like the extra daylight in the summer, they just don’t like the time change where they have to Spring Forward. It could also mean that they don’t like suddenly having it be dark when they come home from work in the fall.
They are all valid points of view, but different. I’ve tried to explain it with words forever, and then the incomparable Kirk Anderson came up with this cool graphic that does it much better:
I think this makes it clear that if you want to take a position on DST, you’ll want to actually take two positions:
Do you want to change the clocks twice a year?
If not, which time zone do you want to be in, Standard or Daylight Saving Time?
If you have clarity on those two questions, then you’ll be able to figure out what you do want.
By the way, you may be asking what I want. I’ll tell you: No more clock changing, and for Colorado I think year-round DST works best. For many other states, especially ones like Nebraska and Michigan that are on the western edge of their time zones, they may opt for year-round standard time. Whatever they want is fine with me.
The best thing for all of us would be to just stop doing the thing that is deadly, and that’s changing clocks twice a year.
So, really, your boss would be a moron to make you get up early, only to risk that you are either going to have a heart attack, have a stroke or get in a car accident. The absolute best case scenario is that you’ll make it to work and be totally unproductive.
If your boss looks at you funny and says you must be joking, you can show him this post, or just this picture:
So, enjoy your popcorn (lovers or otherwise) day and be safe on the Monday after Daylight Saving Time.
It’s time for journalists to start taking Daylight Saving Time seriously.
I’ve been the leading activist on ending the clock-changing mandate for a couple of years now, and one of the things I do is monitor every story that comes out about DST.
Look, I was a journalist for a long time. I know how easy it is to think that Big Issues like the state budget deficit or entitlements or whatever are the ones that everyone SHOULD be reading because they are Important.
But if you pay any attention at all to actual readers, nobody is reading those stories.
What they read, and what they care about, is issues that they can understand, and when it comes to politics they want to read about things that they think can actually be fixed.
Daylight Saving Time is just such an issue.
In the last couple of weeks I’ve seen two particularly egregious examples.
The first comes from Curtis Haring of Utah Political Capitol.
It’s dripping with ugly sarcasm. Example: “… the unbearable burden of having to spring forward and then fall back every year.”
Several points:
You, Curtis, don’t get to decide what’s Important, and what’s not.
You story makes it seem that those working on this are doing it to the exclusion of all else. That’s just wrong. In all 50 states there are hundreds of bills. They all get their due. The state legislators working on this just want to fix something that the government does that’s clearly broken. That’s why they ran in the first place, to fix stuff.
Perhaps most upsetting to me is how this story chastises Rep. Norm Thurston. I haven’t met him, but looking around online it’s clear he’s an honorable guy trying to do the right thing. You point out, correctly, that previous efforts on this topic have died, but then you lay in to Rep. Thurston for the sin of trying again with a different tactic.
Trying something new is to be applauded. You, Curtis, seem only interested in gridlock.
Shame on you, Curtis Haring. Shame.
And kudos to Rep. Thurston. I look forward to the progress that your new thinking will bring to this issue!
Example two
Here is another one that is not so upsetting, but is way more pathetic. Hey, Brett Barrouquere, I know time is tight for reporters, much so more than when I was one. Still, that’s no excuse to write, “Nearly all of the United States – except Arizona and Hawaii (because they want to be different) – observe Daylight Saving Time.”
In fact, Arizona and Hawaii want much more than to just be different, what they want is to not have to change the clocks twice per year without a good reason to do so, and so they were able to keep their time zones because they were in place before the Uniform Time Act of 1966. Also your flip “yes, that’s a real thing” about that act is unbecoming of a reporter talking about federal law. It makes sense that the government is involved in the setting of time. Would you rather that we go back to a time when every town in the world set the clock how it wanted?
If people in the 1800s could figure out that uniform time is needed for transportation by train, certainly you could figure that out, too, Brett, here in the 21st century.
Message to reporters
In short, if you are a reporter thinking about covering this, you should know that this is a serious policy issue.
It certainly has its fun and funny sides, and I celebrate those as much as anyone, but I do it with respect for the policy implications that simmer under the surface.
Fixing the time does not have big-money interests behind it, so it’s left to us — a band of citizens, part-time legislators, and other activists — to make the case. If this was a good or bad thing for Monsanto or the Trial Lawyers, etc., you better believe that it would have lots of great lobbying being done and you would not be so flip or so dismissive.
The future, the old saying goes, does not have a lobbyist.
In this case, however, it does. It has me, and it has the will of the people.
I’ll be watching and calling you out by name if you don’t treat Daylight Saving Time like the serious issue that it is.
I just looked around, and can say these seven things very clearly:
I have been blogging about Daylight Saving Time for more than two years, and am now pretty much the leading voice on this admittedly very niche issue.
In October of 2014 when I did a piece for CNN, I was seen of something of an oddity.
In the years since, I’ve seen a ton of research come out about how bad the clock changing is.
I’ve also seen a lot more bills proposed around the country. (All but one died, see item 6, below, on that.)
There’s also been a noticeable shift in public opinion, based on Fall Back memes, Spring Forward memes, and just the media coverage in general.
One state (a big one) had a Republican sponsor pass a resolution that I promoted in a very Democratic legislature, showing how bipartisan this issue is.
Now I’m seeing a bunch more state legislators trying to get something done. I’ll list some of them below, but it’s very encouraging.
The problem I have is this: Legislators keep trying to do a thing that I totally support in the underlying spirit, but that I’m quite certain is doomed to failure. That leaves me with two questions:
How do I tell people that I support them, but that they should try something different?
How do I get the word out to legislators before they introduce a (doomed) bill that there’s a better way?
I really need help on both those points. If you have suggestions, please contact me.
Is the sun setting on Daylight Saving Time clock changing? These Canada Geese think so!
In the meantime, here’s what I’ve seen in terms of bills being introduced for the 2017 legislative session:
Wyoming. From the one story about this bill, it’s clear that the main sponsor, Rep. Dan Laursen, agrees with the overwhelming majority of Americans that the time we are in doesn’t matter as much as it’s important to stop changing the clocks twice per year. He apparently first proposed that Wyoming stay in Standard Time all year long, but ran into a buzz saw of opposition. Where year-round Standard Time might be good for some states (like Nevada), for Wyoming year-round DST seems to be best, and will certainly have the least opposition.
New Jersey. This one is kind of inspired, tragic, and wonderful all at once. The sponsor, Shirley Turner, is proposing a resolution calling for extending Daylight Saving Time by a week or two in the fall, making sure that it comes after the election, and not before. The fact that the time change came just before the last election was hard to miss this year. Her resolution says that in more dignified tones. It’s a wonderful resolution, avoiding the trap of thinking a bill or law that applies only to New Jersey would do any good. But it’s tragic — I think — because it just takes something terrible (the time change) and nudges it forward a small bit rather than just eliminating it. Still, good for Sen. Turner for proposing something, rather than just doing nothing. And good for her for proposing a resolution that can get passed without much opposition.
Missouri. The Show Me state has a track record of trying to do something about DST. This bill modifies the tactic I’ve seen from Rep. Mike Kelley before of saying that Missouri will only go to permanent DST if two adjacent states also pass a law saying that they will also go to permanent DST. Similar bills have failed in the past, but maybe this year? The problem, as always, is that even a group of three states will almost certainly not be allowed to switch by the federal government.
Texas. This bill is like so many other doomed bills that have gone before. It will fail, unfortunately, and even if it did pass, the Feds won’t let one state act alone under the Uniform Time Act. Hey, Sen. Menendez, I’m happy to jump on a call with you to help talk about what can work!
Connecticut. (No bill filed yet, but news here.) This is the first time I’ve seen any action from the Nutmeg state, so welcome to the fight, Kurt Vail! As you’ve already seen, this is a great way to get press and get your constituents talking. If one report is true, even you don’t think you’ll be able to get your bill out of committee. You are probably right. But there is a DST resolution you can get passed that will help a great deal. If California can pass it, you can, too! If I can help, just contact me.
A few other states have some early indication of action, including a reprise of past failed efforts in New Mexico and Massachusetts.
In Utah, where bills have failed for years, one state representative is proposing an official statewide vote that would allow people in Utah to voice an opinion. Sounds great! Go, Norm Thurston, go!
Good News on DST
Overall, this may seem like a lot of bad news, but really just the fact that there’s so much news is good news. There’s also been more research that I’ll be updating soon, and a LOT more press coverage, some good and some stinky, but all interesting. I’ll be covering it all.
In short, the momentum is swinging in the direction of fixing the killing aspects of the time change. With a bit more effort, I know we’ll get there.
This election year in the U.S. has been rough, and as I mentioned, the “fall back” change comes in the middle of the last days of the election, meaning it will be one hour longer than it needs to be.
It’s only an hour, but even an hour is an eternity this year.
One of the reasons this year has been so hard is that the two presidential candidates are so different. People really can’t understand how anybody could support the other side.
That’s why I thought this article in the HBR was so helpful. It provides ways of helping people who support Trump an exit-ramp so that they can avoid supporting him without being “wrong” for supporting him in the first place.
I was thinking about that this morning when a friend posted a picture from an annual tradition that he has.
Every year on the last day of Daylight Saving Time, he and some other faithful go for the last sunrise that comes at a reasonable-enough hour, and take in the sunrise, and then they head into the Lakeview Lounge. This is a throwback drinking establishment that opens at 7 a.m.
So I suggested to my friend that this tradition will have to change, or at least evolve, if we can get rid of changing the clocks back and forth for #DST.
He said only, “Don’t do it.” (The guy was busy drinking at 7 a.m., so I didn’t expect a long answer. 😉
But he’s got a legitimate point of view. Taking away the clock changing would take away a fun annual event for him.
Are there other arguments in favor of changing the clocks twice per year? I really haven’t heard any. I’ve heard from lots of people that like either year-round DST or year-round standard time.
But other than my friend and his desire to have a once-a-year cocktail at 7 a.m., I haven’t heard of anyone who likes the clock-changing aspect of DST.