Senate Moves to Protect Sunshine

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Yesterday the United States Senate passed unanimously, by a voice vote, a piece of legislation entitled "The Sunshine Protection Act."   The bill would make daylight savings time permanent beginning in 2023 and put a stop the the twice-a-year time-change that the nation has been experiencing almost continually since the 1966.   In order for the bill to become law it will still have to pass a vote in the US House of Representatives and then be signed into law by President Biden.

Daylight savings time is currently in operation throughout most of the United States.  Hawaii does not use it, nor does most of Arizona (the Navajo Nation, most of which is in Arizona, does use it), and it is also not in effect in any of the overseas US Territories, including Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa,  the Northern Mariana Islands, and the US Virgin Islands.  The new legislation would still allow those places to remain on "standard time" if they desired to do so.

Benjamin Franklin proposed a system similar to today's daylight savings time nearly three centuries ago.  Germany instituted the modern version during World War I and it was quickly adopted for the duration of the war by the other combatant nations, including the United States.  The United States had also used daylight savings time throughout World War II.  President Lyndon Johnson signed daylight savings time legislation into law in April of 1966.  It was controversial then and remains so today, nearly sixty years later.  

Congress made daylight savings time a year-round affair from early January of 1974 through late April of 1975 as a fuel-saving response to the international oil embargo, but the regular time changes were resumed once the crisis passed.

Those who favored the change back in the 1960's successfully argued that providing more hours of daylight during summer evenings conserved energy by reducing demands of lighting and heating, gave people more recreational time, and reduced crime and car accidents.  Now proponents of extending daylight savings time to a year-round basis are also arguing that it will help reduce seasonal depression (Seasonal Affective Disorder).

But others pushed back against the change by noting that it forced children to leave for school in the dark.  Today that argument is still cited, and some sleep experts are also contending that daylight savings time makes it harder to be alert in the mornings.

One big change that rippled across the American landscape when the current system of daylight savings time came into effect was the quick demise of drive-in theaters.  The outdoor entertainment centers were a fixture of many communities, but the new summer hours meant that the darkness - which was necessary for the outdoor movies to be seen - now came an hour later.    The drive-ins, whose busiest seasons were the warm months, the months when the new daylight savings time was in effect, were forced to start movies around 9:00 p.m. or later, which meant that a long movie might run until midnight, and a double-feature might even run later than that.

There are those who also suspect that the onset of daylight savings time in the 1960's has led to the steep decline in the nocturnal rural pastime of raccoon hunting.

Golf courses, on the other hand, benefitted from the longer days, as did people involved in the manufacture and sales of charcoal.  (More evening daylight created extra time to barbecue.)

Congress and the President will soon let us know what time it is - and for how long!

Random notes:

1. There is a fringe group (this scribe included) grousing that if we are going back to a permanent-time concept, why not just return to "standard" time.   I really enjoyed drive-in movie theatres, and I don't play golf.   Raccoons, on the other hand, would probably disagree.

2.  A Native American gentleman occasionally posts a tweet on the topic of daylight savings time in which he states:  "Only a white man would cut two inches off of the top of a blanket, sew it to the bottom of the blanket, and think that he has a longer blanket."