https://washingtonian.com/2022/03/15/the-us-tried-permanent-...
> the inkling of light they get during their winter commute
It's not an inkling. Unless you roll out of bed and instantly onto your commute, you're getting natural sunlight through all your windows for hours every morning. That's exactly when you need it.
> you're getting natural sunlight through all your windows for hours every morning
Hah "hours". Not in Northern Europe you're not. My commute is dark on both sides. If I had to choose which side I'd prefer to be brighter I'd prefer the end of the day rather than feeling like my daylight has been wasted in the office. I shift my schedule in winter to make up for this as best I can.
I guess it kinda hinges on this idea of "wasting" daylight. I don't feel like that. I want the sun to wake me up, and have no problem doing whatever I like when it's dark in the evening. Do people generally go on hikes after work? I go out for drinks. haha
> I guess it kinda hinges on this idea of "wasting" daylight. I don't feel like that. I want the sun to wake me up
The problem is that during the darkest parts of winter, even if I postpone my wake up as long as possible, I'm still getting up in the dark if I want to be able to commute into work on time. There's no sunlight waking me up.
> Do people generally go on hikes after work? I go out for drinks. haha
No, but I still have to do things like walk the dog, do the shopping on the way home. I find it a lot more pleasant starting out that part of day with a bit of sunlight.
Also, yes, drinks. This is Northern Europe after all.
EDIT to add: Civil twilight in December where I am starts ~07:40, and I also get up around 06:30 (when not dealing with insomnia like tonight).
Russia tried all-year DST for several years and ended up getting rid of it. So even in more-north regions, where you'd think it would not matter, people still do not seem to like all-year / permanent DST (pDST).
Yes. Of course. That’s the whole point of shifting the daylight hours.
You get off work and head to the crag to climb a few routes before it gets dark. It’s like a little mini weekend every evening for those summer months.
But yeah, if you never take advantage of that, it’s understandable to want some light in the morning I guess. But yikes, why not go out and enjoy the sunshine?
If that means that bedtime falls within 3 hours of the sunset then so be it. I’ve survived this long at least.
Also at this latitude, without daylight saving time, the sun would be waking you up at 4AM! Totally happy with the time switch, but if it has to go, yes, give me daylight saving time all the time. Winter is dark anyway.
But, what a terrible argument! "I prefer", haha. Oh well.
That said, with the shortest day's light ending before 5pm, even shifting to near 6pm doesn't really help - I'm at the office to 5-ish and if I'm lucky I can be ready to run/bike/whatever by 5:45, so its going dark mid-workout at best.
And I'm up at 5am, so in the dark most of the year. Ditching DST would make it daylight in mid-summer, but I do really enjoy having daylight past 8pm, so I can sit outside and read.
People with dogs do that.
Sadly, not if you're a student living in a basement in Vancouver!
Southerners...
(Chiming in from Denmark)
Had to do a double take, as that's my steam handle.
Same here. And I've never figured out why DST fades the curtains.
I can only say speak for yourself, some of us have major problems with jet lag. Especially as someone on the west coast, I am exhausted any time I have to travel east for work
I like how the light signals the shift from angst season to normal season, though.
I'd rather not have a clock and farm from sunrise to sunset, to be honest.
There's nothing more glorious than those late summer solstice sunsets w/ daylight time, where the sun doesn't set until 10pm. Great for festivals and planning outdoor activities with friends.
"Big Golf" has been super active in lobbying for DST. https://businessjournalism.org/2020/10/the-stakeholders-of-d... I'd personally prefer Standard Time year round, so I can have daylight to do activities early in the morning.
This description of farming also generally ignores animal husbandry, which outside of factory farms also ties work to the sun regardless of what the clock says, what part of the year it is, or what latitude you're on. When the rest of the world you have to interact with changes their clock, you have to both accommodate the animals' lack of understanding and desire for routine and adjust your own work around it. Dairy farmers aren't putting lighting in cow barns for fun or aesthetics, they're manipulating day/night schedules to get cows on the times that commerce relies on.
> Permanent daylight saving time was signed into law by President Richard Nixon in January 1974, but there were complaints of children going to school in the dark and working people commuting and starting their work day in pitch darkness during the winter. By October 1974, President Gerald Ford signed a law repealing year-round daylight savings time.
It's a perfect example of "the public" not really knowing what they want or perhaps different factions (unknowingly) wanting different things and not realizing this until the change actually happens. This isn't helped by how these ideas are often oversold as having no downsides instead of being realistic about what the trade-off is.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time#History
It also cites one opinion poll. And we have to keep in mind this happened FIFTY years ago.
I’m not even a permanent DST advocate. It’s just weird to me the link you shared does nothing to substantiate your position.
Update: my suspicions were correct — there was a public panic caused by parents groups that had no basis in fact:
> Considerable opposition to observing DST during the winter had come from school groups, such as the National School Boards Association, which expressed concern over darkness during the morning school commute.[47][48]
> When members of Congress introduced legislation to repeal the practice, they stated it jeopardized children's safety, citing the deaths of eight schoolchildren in Florida since DST had been enacted a few weeks prior
Ironically:
> A meta-analysis by Rutgers researchers found that permanent DST would eliminate 171 pedestrian fatalities (a 13% reduction) per year
If it wasn't for that damn 9 AM Monday meeting (ugh) I would just keep my clocks sent to standard time and start work an hour late in the summer.
I apologize society is inconveniencing you.
> In summer 2019, the Province conducted a public engagement on time observance that saw participation from a record 223,000 people, with 93% supporting adopting year-round DST. Similarly, across all industry groups and nearly all occupational groups, support for year-round DST observance was higher than 90%.
In the evening I'm tired, so I want the extra sunlight to cancel that out a bit, and I want it so I have more opportunities to do things after work. No one is going to do anything for fun in the morning, so giving the light to that time period is wasting it. I want it after work, so I can go somewhere, enjoy the extra warmth, just be anywhere besides home and work.
So I am wondering what the percentages for these preferences are, is t 50-50 split or is one dominant? You'll piss off part of the population any chocie you make nayway, but at least in the European (non-representative) polls they found 80% don't want the twice-yearly switch, so it would be progress anyway?
I don't think that's very realistic though is it? School times are fixed and that anchors a lot of families to those specific times, and businesses tend to have set hours.
Changing the time to give people more light in the evening frees up a bunch of people to enjoy some sunlight without making it a whole fight to have different hours at work.
In the summer, we already have lots of sunlight regardless, so it doesn't make sense to optimize for that.
We tried permanent DST in the US in the 1970s. People hated it.
It shifts my contracted start time at work, my first meeting, when places start serving lunch, when my kid needs to get to ballet class, when my sportsball club meets, and when the supermarket closes. All at once.
Lawmakers changing the time shown on clocks is, I think, a lot easier than society changing the social contract.
I wouldn't want to have to learn a different schedule such as getting up at midnight, having lunch at 04:00 then going to bed at 15:00. That would also make jet lag much worse because you wouldn't be able to rely on your watch to know what activity you're supposed to be doing at the time.
If it didn't would the government actually care?
Most of the population is in the east, in which clock-noon and solar-noon is better matched:
* https://www.china-mike.com/china-travel-tips/tourist-maps/ch...
Doubt Beijing listens to the complaints from Lasa (Tibet) much.
If that's what passes for aspiration these days then the labour movement truly is dead.
Move to DST and if you want the ability to start your day later and end later, [...].
Currently it's doubly bad because the clocks changing also cause a spike in deaths.
I.e., anyone who doesn’t like the change in either direction can just change schedules accordingly for business hours. Whether that means 8-4 or 9-5 or 10-6 is irrelevant. The fact that we would stop altering schedules twice a year is a positive.
We have moved to permanent DST some years ago, and in December and January I wake up and leave home at darkness. Also, since days are so short, I leave office at dark, too.
My body is strongly solar powered. I can't wake up, I can't get up to speed mentally, my brain and body can't work until it sees sunlight.
Body's circadian rhythm needs that light, and artificial replacements doesn't cut it, because it's not only light for my body, apparently.
This behavior is not dependent on my vitamin levels, either. My body is an avid consumer of B, and I take the whole family and then some as supplements. My energy levels visibly increase when I start to wake up with daylight, regardless of what I take.
While many people disagree with me, I'm in this body for more than 40 years now, and I believe I know at least a couple of things about how it works and behaves.
So yes, we should start respecting nature more. Optimizing for numbers doesn't cut it.
I'd bet people would happily trade away the inkling of light they get during their winter commute before locking themselves into their office for some extra daylight when they leave that office.
Daylight is most enjoyable if you can actually make use of it.