Here’s a shocker, a bill aimed to address a longstanding issue has once again stalled in Congress. This time I’m talking about the latest iteration of the Sunshine Protection Act, which would give states the power to make Daylight Savings Time permanent year round. That would mean that the Fall back thing that you’ll be doing this coming Sunday, November 2, at 2 am would someday become a thing of the past. The latest round of this bill seemed to have clearer skies ahead until hitting a thunderclap of a roadblock from a Senator this past week. Let’s shed some light on this not so sunny situation.
The Sunshine Protection Act Would Make Daylight Savings Time Permanent
Again, if this Act were to somehow get through Congress to at some point see the light of day as a law, you would no longer have to do the annual Spring forward and Fall back thing. That’s switching your clocks forward an hour the second Sunday of each March and back an hour the first Sunday of each November. The U.S. first implemented the DST switch with the passage of the Standard Time Act of 1918 and then made sure nearly every jurisdiction followed it with the Uniform Time Act in 1966 The introduction of the DST switch came during World War I when the government wanted to conserve energy resources by adding more daylight hours.
Of course, since then, our country has found other energy sources as well as plenty of other ways to waste energy. So, it has made a lot of people wonder why we are still doing this switcheroo. That prompted current Secretary of State Marco Rubio to introduce the original version of the Sunshine Protection Act a few years ago when he was a Republican Senator for Florida. The sun set on that attempt when it could get past the bickering in the Senate, as I detailed in Forbes back in 2022.
This year two more Republicans from Florida, Senator Rick Scott and Representative Vern Buchanan, picked up the mantle from Rubio and have been championing a new version of this bill. It’s actually already made it past the committee stage and this past Tuesday reached the Senate floor to be be discussed. This bill would permit states that have already passed permanent daylight saving time legislation to proceed with locking their clocks. On the Senate floor, Scott along with other Senators tried to advance the bill by unanimous consent in order to fast-track it, arguing that “this bill is about states’ rights. It allows the people of each state to choose what best fits their needs and the needs of their families.” The bill has had bipartisan support and addresses something that many including Donald Trump and Elon Musk have complained about, which gave it a seemingly decent chance of getting through Congress.
But then grid meet lock. Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) refused to offer his consent to the whole unanimous consent thing. Why did he give the Cotton club to this? Well, Cotton has been a proponent of making standard time the permanent standard rather than Daylight Savings Time. So, rather springing forward with anything new, Congress may yet again be falling back on an unhappy-for-most medium.
Switching Between Daylight Savings Time And Standard Time Can Have Negative Health Effects
Yeah, you aren’t going to find too many people saying, “I love to change the time on my clocks so that I can miss meetings and sleep for a while after that.” In addition to ticking a lot of people off, this time changing thing may not be so good for your health. A study published on September 15 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences estimated that establishing some type of permanent time—either standard time or daylight savings time—throughout the year could prevent 200,000 to 300,000 cases of strokes of each year and 1.7 to 2.6 million cases of obesity. The study was conducted by Lara Weed, a graduate student in bioengineering, and Jamie Zeitzer, PhD, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University. They modeled the light exposure changes faced by people in different counties in the U.S. and the resulting potential circadian rhythm and health impacts, based on county-level data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the prevalence of arthritis, cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, coronary heart disease, depression, diabetes, obesity and stroke.
Changing the clocks either forward or backward can akin to giving the population jet lag without the benefit of traveling. That’s because it can mess with your Circadian rhythm that innate clock in your body that helps regulate your sleep-wake cycle and a lot of your physiologic processes. On average human Circadian rhythm cycles run around 12 minutes longer than 24 hours but can vary significantly from person to person. Different factors like your exposure to light, activity and surrounding activity can affect this cycle. For example, light exposure in the morning could potentially shortening it, while light exposure in the nighttime could potentially extend it.
I’ve also written in Forbes before about studies that have shown how accidents and other bad health events such as heart attacks and strokes tend to increase right after the clock changes. This shouldn’t be too surprising when the “Spring Forward” part leads to your losing an hour of sleep. But the Fall Back part can be disruptive as well, even though you may welcome the extra hour of sleep.
There Are Arguments Both Sides Of The Daylight Savings Time Debate
The U.S. has kept doing this back-and-forth clock thing mainly because there’s been so much back-and-forth about which one is better to make permanent: Daylight Savings Time or Standard Time. The arguments for each direction seem fall along the lines of when in the day do you want to do more of your activities. People who are more “morning people,” otherwise known as Morning Larks, may prefer Standard Time year round because it will keep more sunlight in the morning hours. And people who are more “Night Owls,” otherwise known as people who are more sane, may be saying, “Owl go with the DST option,” because that will add more daylight to the later hours.
Some including the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, the National Sleep Foundation and the American Medical Association have claimed that exposure to light in the early morning is better for your overall health and thus have argued for making standard time the year round standard. But you’ve got to wonder how much personal bias may be entering into any of these arguments. After all, there are plenty of morning larks in the medical profession as evidenced by the prevalence of 7 am meetings.
Plus, many of the studies to date on this whole DST versus standard time argument haven’t taken into account the whole system of complexities involved and the diversity of the population. What’s better for you really depends on a lot of different things. Say you are more of Night Owl, otherwise known as a cooler person. Forcing your schedule to be earlier could make you more miserable, which can’t be good for your health. Also, some work and social circles tend to have activities later at night. If you are in a work or social situation where a given person may be very different based on his or her innate Morning Larkness versus Night Owlishness, surroundings, health situation, social situation, job situation and other things. What if, for example, being forced to wake up earlier cuts into a Night Owl’s work and social opportunties and makes him or her more miserable in general? Would that be better for the Night Owl’s overall health?
Moreover, different parts of the world already experience significant differences in when the sun rises and sets based on how far from the equator they are. If you are going to tell people that having sunlight earlier is better for you, then should you also be telling people in northern Sweden, where the sun can rise as late as 9;30 am or not all, “You are bleep out of luck unless you move to some other part of the world?”