by David Balashinsky
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
These slogans, examples of "doublethink" from George Orwell's 1984, come to mind about this time every year when much of the United States artificially advances spring by about one month as we switch from Standard Time to Daylight Saving Time. Turning the clocks ahead by one hour does not, of course, "save" daylight. It merely steals daylight from its rightful owner, morning, and gives it to nighttime, who neither needs it nor wants it. And while this artifice may give the illusion that we have magically time-traveled forward one month into spring when sunset occurs an hour later, the illusion only works in the afternoon and evening. Every morning, Daylight Saving Time unnaturally prolongs winter by a month, depriving us of an hour of sunshine and making it appear as though it were not early March but early February.
To be fair, "Daylight Saving Time" may not be a perfect example of doublethink because it does not equate one thing with its opposite. (For that matter, "ignorance" and "strength" are not opposites either.) Yet, at the very least, "Daylight Saving Time" (DST) is a misnomer that is intended to promote the fiction that, by legislative fiat, we can increase by an hour the amount of time each day that we experience daylight. Since that is manifestly not true, and since the additional hour of sunlight that we get at nighttime can only come at the expense of the hour of sunlight that we lose every morning, it makes as much sense to refer to Daylight Saving Time as "Daylight Losing Time." It really depends on one's perspective and preference. An unbiased or neutral name for the time-keeping system now in force would be "Daylight Shifting Time" but this doesn't describe which way the shift was made: toward more light in the evening or toward more light in the morning. Moreover, the neutrality of this phrase does not, in my opinion, adequately convey the harms of DST that result from shifting the clocks away from morning light and toward morning darkness. On balance, then, "Daylight Losing Time" (DLT) is a more accurate designation for "Daylight Saving Time."
The name of legislation (which has been pending in congress for several years) that would make DLT permanent - the "Sunshine Protection Act" - represents an even more audacious use of language to foster the
deception that DLT creates an additional hour of sunshine each day. Reading some of the speeches and statements that have been offered in support of this bill one would think that it were actually possible, through an act of congress, to increase the number of hours that the sun shines. According to Senator Patti Murray, "every winter in Washington state, folks despair at the prospect of losing an hour of precious sunlight when we are forced off Daylight Saving Time. . . . This is about . . . just putting a little more light in families' lives so they can spend time together, outdoors, in the sunshine." Senator Martin Heinrich claims that the Sunshine Protection Act will create "More time for sunshine." Similarly, Senator Katie Britt justifies the bill by asserting that "Alabamians want more sunshine. . . ." As reported in the Congressional Record (March 15, 2022), Senator Tommy Tuberville (yes, that Tommy Tuberville) celebrated the senate's passage of the Sunshine Protection Act by unanimous consent with the observation that "[i]t is especially timely given that we all had to change our clocks this past weekend and we are now experiencing longer, sunnier days. . . ." Incidentally, that procedure - "unanimous consent" - by which this bill passed in the senate, with Kyrsten Sinema presiding (yes, that Kyrsten Sinema), occurred, apparently, without many senators even realizing what it was to which they were consenting.
What's also striking is the frequency with which many of the politicians who are so eager to unnaturally alter our sleep-wake cycles invoke what they claim are the positive benefits of DLT. Senator Markey, for example, has stated that "[s]tudies have found that year-round daylight saving time would improve public health, public safety, energy policy, [and] mental health. . . ." A press release from Congressman Vern Buchanan in 2023 in support of the Sunshine Protection Act claims that "[t]here are enormous health and economic benefits to making daylight saving time permanent," including reduced car accidents and accidents involving pedestrians, decreased childhood obesity and increased physical fitness, as well as decreased crime rates and energy usage. Senator Britt, likewise, claims that DLT is "better for our mental and physical health." Patty Murray also cited "public health" and the economy as justifications for switching to permanent DLT.
But just as moving our clocks forward by one hour at the close of each winter doesn't "save" or "protect" daylight, neither would permanent DLT be the panacea its boosters claim it would be. On the contrary, the consensus among the experts - the people who actually study these things - is the exact opposite. They cite numerous harmful effects of DLT - whether permanent or even just for eight months out of the year, as is currently the case - and argue that it would be healthier and more beneficial overall to adopt Standard Time (ST) year-round. The list of organizations representing the many experts who have endorsed the adoption of permanent ST is long. It includes the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, the American Medical Association, the Canadian Sleep Society, The National Sleep Foundation, the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms, the American Academy of Cardiovascular Sleep Medicine, the American Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine, the American Association of Sleep Technologists, the American College of Chest Physicians, the National Safety Council, the Society of Behavioral Sleep Medicine, the Sleep Research Society, the World Sleep Society, and scores of other organizations.
The increased risk of harm and the actual harms of advancing the clocks by one hour every winter are well recognized and include acute myocardial infarction (heart attack), stroke, sleep-loss, increased motor-vehicle accident fatalities, depression, anxiety and seasonal affective disorder. Aside from the disruption to my own circadian rhythms (more on this below) and, obviously,
the increased darkness that result from switching to DLT, my chief
objection to it originates in my love of nature and the inspiration that
I draw from natural phenomena. This is especially true of the waxing
and waning of daylight as the seasons change. Part of what makes the lengthening days of winter and spring
so appealing, after all, is that each day is just a little bit longer than the one that
preceded it. This portends summer's inevitable triumph over winter as daylight supplants darkness by a few minutes each day, culminating in the arrival of the summer solstice. It's like watching something beautiful grow. At the latitude where I
live, the change in daylight - not just how much of it there is every
day but even its color - is noticeable as the angle of insolation
changes. To experience firsthand, and in such a salient way, the reminder that we live on a planet that rotates on a tilted axis as it revolves around
the Sun is to witness, every single day, one of the wonders of the universe. How can one not be awed by that?
Yet with DLT, all this is ruined every March. It is not just jarring but an affront to the cosmos to artificially advance this natural cycle by an hour. It cheapens and demeans the experience. DLT is the epitome of a toddler's need for instant gratification. It's like reading a novel and, halfway through, skipping ahead by a hundred pages just to get to the end more quickly. If one engages with literature this way, can one really appreciate the book? Can one even claim to have read it? Likewise, if one knows time, nature, and daylight only in their manipulated state, can one really appreciate them?
The fact that congress has come as close as it has to getting rid of the biannual time shift indicates that our society is at a tipping point. No one seems to like switching the clocks forward and backward every year (that's an exaggeration: nineteen percent of Americans actually do) but the question is what to do about it. Obviously, there are two sets of choices here, one contingent upon the other. The first is whether or not to continue setting the clocks ahead in March and back to Standard Time in November. If that is resolved in favor of scrapping the biannual time-shift, the next question would be what to replace it with. One option would be a permanent return to Standard Time, or Natural Time (NT). I say "return" because this is the system under which humans have prospered, phylogenetically speaking, throughout our evolutionary history. It is also the system that we have consciously used throughout most of our recorded history. (DLT originated in Canada in 1908. The first nationwide implementation of DLT was by Germany in 1916 and it wasn't until 1918 that DLT, then called "War Time," was established in the United States.) I also specify "Natural Time" because this system is based on the position of the Sun relative to the Earth. Twelve noon is twelve noon because that is when the Sun is at its highest point overhead. The alternative would be the establishment of permanent DLT or Unnatural Time (UT). I say "Unnatural Time" for the obvious reason that a system that offsets time by one hour rather than indicating the time that actually is, is by any measure unnatural. If the position of the Sun relative to our location on Earth creates a natural noontime, it follows that it's unnatural to designate noon as one o'clock. It's equally unnatural, albeit less noticeably damaging to our circadian rhythms, to designate 11:01 p.m. Sunday as 12:01 a.m. Monday, or 11:01 p.m. December 31st, 2025, as 12:01 a.m., January 1st, 2026, which is what permanent DLT/UT would force us to do.
From a health standpoint, permanent DLT would be better - and not by much - than the biannual time switch but it would still be unhealthy. The main reason is that permanent DLT would force us to live our entire lives in "circadian misalignment." As Beth A. Malow explains in a position statement on behalf of the Sleep Research Society, under permanent DLT, "[t]he timing of natural light becomes desynchronized from normal physiological processes, with dysregulation of melatonin and cortisol. Disruption of these hormones contributes to stress, altered metabolism, and inflammation [citation omitted]." The reason for this circadian misalignment, as Matthew Solan points out, is simply that our "[c]ircadian rhythms largely depend on light exposure. . . . Less morning light can decrease levels of the mood-boosting hormone serotonin. In contrast, exposure to light later in the evening can delay the production of melatonin, the hormone that helps you fall asleep." The result is that, under permanent DLT, it would be harder to wake up every morning and harder to fall asleep every night, year-round. As Horacio de la Iglesia, another specialist in the study of circadian rhythms, puts it, living under permanent DLT "would be like Monday morning every day for the rest of your life."
One of the ways that sleep- and circadian rhythm researchers gauge the effects of light on our health is by studying the "western edge effect." Here's Malow, again:
The literature on time zone border effects has been used to support the role of DST in contributing to sleep loss and circadian misalignment. Compared to those living on the eastern edge of a time zone, people living on the western edge of a time zone, who get light later in the morning, and later in the evening, self-report getting less sleep. . . . This sleep loss is believed to be secondary to evening light exposure delaying the brain's release of melatonin. Sleep loss in adults has been associated with weight gain and obesity, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and stroke, depression, and increased risk of death, along with impaired immune function, increased pain, impaired performance, increased errors, and greater risk of accidents. Sleep loss in children has been associated with attention, behavior, and learning problems along with increased risk of accidents, injuries, hypertension, obesity, diabetes, depression, self-harm, suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts [citations omitted].
Malow also notes that residents of western edges had higher rates of many kinds of cancer and other health problems as well as lower per capita income and higher health care costs. "Those supporting a return to permanent ST," she observes, argue that permanent DLT "would exacerbate these effects."
There are also practical consequences of pushing day into night and night into day. As I have already mentioned, unnaturally prolonging daylight by an hour at nighttime necessarily entails prolonging darkness by an hour every morning. The result of permanent DLT, then, would be that, in some locations, sunrise wouldn't occur until after 9:00 a.m. during the winter months. In my location, Binghamton, NY, under permanent DLT, sunrise wouldn't occur until after 8:00 a.m. for three months out of the year. That means my wife would be leaving for work in darkness from the middle of November through the middle of February. The children who live across the street from me get picked up by a school bus at 7:00 a.m. every day. For them, permanent DLT would mean that they'd be waiting outside in the dark every morning for close to six months out of the year. This is a semi-rural area so, fortunately for them, the bus picks them up in front of their house. But what about the millions of children who walk to school, or walk to bus stops? As it happens, it was partly due to the entirely valid anxiety of parents over the safety and welfare of their children who had to walk to school in darkness that permanent DLT was abandoned - less than a year after it was established, so unpopular was it - when it was tried in the 1970s. I'm an early riser so, for me, getting up at 5:00 a.m. every day means that under permanent DLT I'd be getting up in darkness 365 days per year. (If you want to know when sunrise and sunset would occur in your location or in any location in the United States under any of the three alternative time systems - permanent ST, permanent DLT or switching back and forth - Save Standard Time has an easy-to-use interactive sunrise calculator that you can use to find out.)
This is what 6:00 a.m., DLT (Daylight "Saving" Time), March 19, 2025 looks like at my house:
This is what 6:00 a.m., Standard Time (Natural Time), March 19, 2025 would look like:
Still another consideration is energy consumption. That was the original rationale for "War Time" back in 1918. For the life of me I cannot see how burning one kilowatt hour of energy at 7:00 a.m. uses less energy or costs less than burning the same kilowatt hour at 8:00 p.m. would. Sure, I can turn the lights on an hour later at night under DLT, but that just means that I also have to turn the lights on an hour earlier in the morning. Nevertheless, the proponents of permanent DLT continue to claim that it would result in less energy usage. Yet, here too, the facts are at odds with the claims. A study of energy usage in Indiana under both systems determined that the adoption of DLT added $8.6 million dollars to the energy bills of Indiana residents each year. As reported in the Toronto Star, the researchers concluded that "since 95 per cent of that extra energy was generated by coal-fired power plants, that meant much more atmospheric-warming carbon dioxide was spewed into the air. Expanded nationally, these results would translate to at least two coal-fired electricity plants pumping power just to feed the daylight savings habit."
It goes without saying that enjoying sunshine during the day rather than at night is a personal preference. Mine is for a time system based on the position of the Earth relative to the Sun and in harmony with our bodies. I prefer Standard Time and dislike Daylight Losing Time in the same way that I would prefer not to have PFAS ("forever chemicals") in my food and water and would prefer not to have microplastics circulating in my bloodstream and embedded in my organs. Call it what you will, nothing, including Orwellian euphemisms, can alter the fact that DLT is unnatural and harmful. And, as bad as it is living with it for eight months out the year, making
DLT permanent would mean that every minute of every hour and every hour
of every day, 365 days per year, would not be what the clock says it is but a counterfeit time, told by a "false clock." Much like the "innies" of Severance, we would be confined within an artificial reality but stuck there until the end of time itself.
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For more information and to learn how you can help save Standard Time, visit Save Standard Time, the Coalition for Permanent Standard Time and the International Alliance for Natural Time.
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About me: I am originally from New York City and now live near the Finger Lakes region of New York. I am a licensed physical therapist and I write about bodily autonomy and human rights, gender, culture, and politics. I currently serve on the board of directors for the Genital Autonomy Legal Defense & Education Fund, (GALDEF), the board of directors and advisors for Doctors Opposing Circumcision and the leadership team for Bruchim.
