“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want,” H.L. Mencken wrote in 1916, “and deserve to get it good and hard.”
It’s with this quote that I’ll pass along the news that the U.S. Senate on Tuesday consented to sending many of your children to the bus stop in the cold and dark for months on end. And it did so, as the New York Times summarizes, “with almost no warning and no debate.”
Mine is a somewhat uncharitable summary, but it’s accurate. And it gets at a larger problem with the very valid debate — or, in the Senate’s case, lack thereof — over daylight saving time.
The Senate on Tuesday passed by unanimous consent a bill make daylight saving time permanent. This is something that has been percolating for a while now, and it shouldn’t escape your notice that the change was undertaken as many of the senators involved were undoubtedly still a little sleep-deprived from moving our clocks forward this past weekend. This is, it would seem, a move born largely of emotion — so why not do it when you’re stressed?
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I would submit that perhaps that’s not the best way to conduct our country’s business.
There are valid reasons to want to make our clocks stay constant. Among them are the mental strain created by the twice-per-year switch and the negative impact of earlier winter sunsets on the business community. Various groups with real insight into the issue, like the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, have pushed for this — though in that last case they prefer permanent standard time, which would mean less darkness in the morning but more in the afternoon and evening.
But because the Senate opted not to really chew this one over, perhaps we can.
Last year, when the idea started to get traction, we noted that this is an idea with precedent — and not a good one. In 1973, President Richard M. Nixon proposed temporarily making daylight saving time permanent to help the country get through an energy crisis. And people liked it! Nearly three-quarters of Americans supported it, according to multiple polls.
Then it was implemented, and suddenly people realized what it meant. They turned on a dime against it. The policy went into effect in January 1974, and by March polling showed Americans opposed the switch by 20-plus-point margins.
The overriding reason: Without standard time in the winter, they were going to work when it was darker and colder, and they were putting their kids at the bus stop when it was darker and colder. (Nor did it, incidentally, conserve energy; a Transportation Department report concluded as much.)
So just how much more darkness and cold would we be exposing ourselves and our children to in those winter mornings? Quite a bit. In Washington, D.C., the sun wouldn’t rise before 8 a.m. for more than two and a half months — more than one-fifth of your annual mornings.
The effects vary by location, with morning darkness lingering longer in areas farther north (because they receive less sunlight, in general) and farther to the western edge of each time zone (because the sun rises in the east). Parts of western North Dakota, northern Michigan, western Indiana, eastern Oregon and even western Texas would see five months or more of no sunrises before 8 a.m. Much of Alaska would see no sunrise before 8 a.m. for a majority of the year.
(The bill does allow states to opt for standard time in areas that are exempt from daylight saving time, but extending this to areas suddenly dealing with months more of darkness would mean they lose the benefits of daylight saving in the non-winter months.)
In the case of our little experiment in the 1970s, the timing was admittedly poor. The change was undertaken in the dead of winter, and people were immediately served with the consequences. This time, the change arguably has more of an opportunity to succeed, given that it wouldn’t go into effect until next year.
Whether it will ultimately become law isn’t so certain. What the Senate effectively did was put this in the House’s hands, where it can have a real debate about what to do.
It’s not so apparent the House will sign off as expeditiously as the Senate did. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) office said it will review the legislation, though it did refer a reporter to a supportive comment from another Democratic lawmaker. But House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) sounded more of a skeptical note Tuesday.
“How are people going to feel at 7 o’clock in the morning in December, when they put their kids out on the street to catch the school bus, and it’s dead, flat dark?” Hoyer said. He emphasized that he doesn’t have strong feelings and that he likes daylight saving time but added that “I don’t send a kid to school.”
Others weren’t so interested in addressing such questions. The bill’s bipartisan Senate supporters hailed it as giving us less depression and more sunshine. (Strictly speaking, we’ll get the same amount of sunshine; it’ll just be moved later in the winter.) The bill’s title is the Sunshine Protection Act, which — how can you oppose protecting sunshine?
Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) admitted the issue hadn’t been a priority in his town halls: “All I know is, constantly, every year, my wife wants it to be permanent.”
That, it seems, is as good a reason as any to just push it through.
It’s with this quote that I’ll pass along the news that the U.S. Senate on Tuesday consented to sending many of your children to the bus stop in the cold and dark for months on end. And it did so, as the New York Times summarizes, “with almost no warning and no debate.”
Mine is a somewhat uncharitable summary, but it’s accurate. And it gets at a larger problem with the very valid debate — or, in the Senate’s case, lack thereof — over daylight saving time.
The Senate on Tuesday passed by unanimous consent a bill make daylight saving time permanent. This is something that has been percolating for a while now, and it shouldn’t escape your notice that the change was undertaken as many of the senators involved were undoubtedly still a little sleep-deprived from moving our clocks forward this past weekend. This is, it would seem, a move born largely of emotion — so why not do it when you’re stressed?
ADVERTISING
I would submit that perhaps that’s not the best way to conduct our country’s business.
There are valid reasons to want to make our clocks stay constant. Among them are the mental strain created by the twice-per-year switch and the negative impact of earlier winter sunsets on the business community. Various groups with real insight into the issue, like the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, have pushed for this — though in that last case they prefer permanent standard time, which would mean less darkness in the morning but more in the afternoon and evening.
But because the Senate opted not to really chew this one over, perhaps we can.
Last year, when the idea started to get traction, we noted that this is an idea with precedent — and not a good one. In 1973, President Richard M. Nixon proposed temporarily making daylight saving time permanent to help the country get through an energy crisis. And people liked it! Nearly three-quarters of Americans supported it, according to multiple polls.
Then it was implemented, and suddenly people realized what it meant. They turned on a dime against it. The policy went into effect in January 1974, and by March polling showed Americans opposed the switch by 20-plus-point margins.
The overriding reason: Without standard time in the winter, they were going to work when it was darker and colder, and they were putting their kids at the bus stop when it was darker and colder. (Nor did it, incidentally, conserve energy; a Transportation Department report concluded as much.)
So just how much more darkness and cold would we be exposing ourselves and our children to in those winter mornings? Quite a bit. In Washington, D.C., the sun wouldn’t rise before 8 a.m. for more than two and a half months — more than one-fifth of your annual mornings.
The effects vary by location, with morning darkness lingering longer in areas farther north (because they receive less sunlight, in general) and farther to the western edge of each time zone (because the sun rises in the east). Parts of western North Dakota, northern Michigan, western Indiana, eastern Oregon and even western Texas would see five months or more of no sunrises before 8 a.m. Much of Alaska would see no sunrise before 8 a.m. for a majority of the year.
(The bill does allow states to opt for standard time in areas that are exempt from daylight saving time, but extending this to areas suddenly dealing with months more of darkness would mean they lose the benefits of daylight saving in the non-winter months.)
In the case of our little experiment in the 1970s, the timing was admittedly poor. The change was undertaken in the dead of winter, and people were immediately served with the consequences. This time, the change arguably has more of an opportunity to succeed, given that it wouldn’t go into effect until next year.
Whether it will ultimately become law isn’t so certain. What the Senate effectively did was put this in the House’s hands, where it can have a real debate about what to do.
It’s not so apparent the House will sign off as expeditiously as the Senate did. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) office said it will review the legislation, though it did refer a reporter to a supportive comment from another Democratic lawmaker. But House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) sounded more of a skeptical note Tuesday.
“How are people going to feel at 7 o’clock in the morning in December, when they put their kids out on the street to catch the school bus, and it’s dead, flat dark?” Hoyer said. He emphasized that he doesn’t have strong feelings and that he likes daylight saving time but added that “I don’t send a kid to school.”
Others weren’t so interested in addressing such questions. The bill’s bipartisan Senate supporters hailed it as giving us less depression and more sunshine. (Strictly speaking, we’ll get the same amount of sunshine; it’ll just be moved later in the winter.) The bill’s title is the Sunshine Protection Act, which — how can you oppose protecting sunshine?
Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) admitted the issue hadn’t been a priority in his town halls: “All I know is, constantly, every year, my wife wants it to be permanent.”
That, it seems, is as good a reason as any to just push it through.
