Ending clock changes? Consider the drawbacks first

Photo by Yaniv Knobel on Unsplash

If a growing number of Americans have their way — including two who have the ear of President-elect Donald J. Trump, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy — changing clocks twice a year will soon be a thing of the past.

Musk and Ramaswamy, who have been tapped by Trump to lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency” during his second administration, have called for abolishing the practice of springing forward and falling back, and it seems to be one of the few issues that enjoys bipartisan support in a deeply divided America.

With this renewed focus on time changes, I’m going to repeat something I’ve said many times: be careful what you wish for.

I’m a reformed advocate for year-round time. I would have once argued vehemently for making Daylight Savings Time permanent — because who doesn’t like more daylight in the evening? But as much as I detest the Dark-At-5:30 season we’re currently in, I eventually came to realize that the twice-a-year clock changes are pretty effective at what they’re designed to do, which is maximize our usage of the daylight hours.

The truth is that many Americans — maybe even most — who want to put a stop to changing clocks twice a year don’t really know which side of the argument they’re for.

When a news outlet posted on Facebook Wednesday that Musk and Ramaswamey are proposing to “permanently end Daylight Savings Time,” a reader commented, “Good. Keep the daylight later.”

Not good … not if later daylight is what you’re after. Permanently ending Daylight Savings Time would mean we stay on Standard Time, the time we’re currently on, year-around. Not only would it keep getting dark at 5:30 p.m. in the winter, but we’d lose an hour of evening daylight in the summer.

The truth is that however united they may be in their desire to stop changing their clocks, Americans are nearly evenly divided on whether that should be accomplished by abolishing Daylight Savings Time completely, or leaving it in place year-round.

So which would it be?

Choose your poison.

Right now, in early December, the sun sets at about 5:20 p.m. where I live, which is pretty gross. Drive 15 minutes west, into the central time zone, and it sets at about 4:20 p.m., which is much worse.

But the sun rises right now at around 7:30 a.m. By the end of this month, it’ll be rising at about 7:50 a.m.

Now imagine that Daylight Savings Time were made permanent. The sun would be setting right now at 6:20 p.m., which isn’t as nice as a light-at-9 p.m. summer evening, but it’s a whole lot better than what we currently have.

The tradeoff, though, would be that the sun wouldn’t rise until 8:30 a.m. — almost 9 a.m. by the end of this month.

Imagine students waiting in the dark to catch the bus to school when they return to January. It would be dead dark. Talk about a safety hazard. In fact, Congress tried to make Daylight Savings Time permanent in the early ‘70s and it didn’t last long before they realized they had made a mistake — for this very reason.

Not only would it be pitch-black-dark when students are trying to board the bus, but it would remain dark all the way through first period. Students sitting in class and trying to concentrate when it’s still night outside? That’s almost as gross as darkness descending at 5:30 p.m. when many of us are still trying to get home from work.

So, if making DST permanent is a bad idea, we can just agree to eliminate it entirely, right?

That comes with its own issues. Around here, that would mean the sun would set just before 8 p.m. even in the middle of summer. Those who don’t like maximizing their summer evenings doing outdoors activities will probably shrug and say “what’s wrong with that?” But skip back over to the eastern portion of the central time zone, and it would be getting dark just before 7 p.m. in the middle of summer. Again, that’s pretty gross.

Not only that, but eliminating DST would mean that it would start to get light outside at about 4:45 a.m. here in my neck of the woods when sunrise is at its earliest in late June. For my neighbors just a few miles to the west, in the central time zone, it would be getting daylight at 3:45 a.m. Yikes.

The twice-a-year time changes are pretty annoying; there’s no doubt about that, although the internet of things and automated clocks have made them far less annoying than they used to be. Most of us don’t even notice time changes any more; we simply go to bed on Saturday night and wake up when our alarm goes off on Sunday morning. Our clocks automatically do the rest.

But however annoying they may be, those time changes really do serve a purpose. There’s no way to eliminate them without a drawback. Pick your poison: 4 a.m. daylight in the summer, or 8 a.m. darkness in the winter.

When there are no good alternatives, sometimes it’s best to leave well enough alone.