The 5 Dumbest Arguments Against The Sunshine Protection Act

Four years ago, the Senate voted unanimously to ditch the switch and stick with daylight saving time year-round. Nineteen states have passed laws that would make DST permanent, if the federal government would let them. And this week, the House approved the Sunshine Protection Act by a 3-to-1 margin.

But don’t count on it becoming law.

As Politico reports, it “faces an uphill battle in the Senate despite strong lobbying from the White House and personal engagement from President Donald Trump.”

The problem is that enough Senators are likely to be swayed by critics to block it, even though the arguments against the bill are entirely specious. Here are the five worst ones:

Permanent “standard time” is better for your health. The argument here is that keeping our clocks in sync with the sun promotes a healthier life by aligning with our circadian rhythms. But that argument fails for several reasons, not least of which is the fact that we are already two-thirds of the way to permanent daylight saving time. The country is only on “standard” time for 127 days. In any case, it’s the switching back and forth that has proved to be the real public health menace. (See: “Just Say No To The Clock Changing Madness: It’s Pointless And Dangerous.”) There’s no question that a permanent DST would be better for public health than what we have now.

We shouldn’t fool with God’s time. “When we mess with time, we lose touch with this higher reality,” says one religious critic. “We need to respect this time and its Author.” But this is an argument against time zones, not daylight saving time. Time zones, after all, are man-made constructs that stretch hundreds of miles, and in some cases more than 1,000 miles. Which means that almost nobody’s watch respects time’s Author.

Maine and Michigan, for example, are both in the Eastern Time Zone.

As a result, the sun will rise in Bangor, Maine, at 6:40 a.m. on Dec. 21, but not until 8:40 a.m. in White Pine, Michigan.  Which one of those is on “God’s time”? Whose circadian rhythms are being mis-synced? (See: “Stop The Clock-Switching Madness: A Response To Reader Comments.”)

Plus, if you look at existing time zones, they defy time’s Author in even more blatant ways — because they were made by politicians, not religious leaders. The northern part of Idaho, for example, is on Pacific Time, and the southern part on Mountain Time. Which is in sync with God’s time?

Kids would have to walk to school in the dark. Our first reaction is, boo hoo. But if this is a legitimate concern, there’s a better solution than forcing the entire country to switch clocks twice a year. Just push the start time for elementary school back. After all, why should more than 300 million people suffer the ill effects of twice-a-year time changes for the benefit of a few school kids? If the country went back to a permanent “standard time,” the same people would be complaining that kids can’t play sports because it gets dark too early in the spring and fall.

We tried it before, and it failed. Critics say we’ve been there already and the country rejected it, pointing to the “Emergency Daylight Saving Time Energy Conservation Act” that went into effect in January 1974 and was jettisoned 10 months later. But that doesn’t prove anything. The 1974 bill was passed in a panic during the “energy crisis” and forced people to “spring forward” in the dead of winter, causing massive disruption. A law that simply cancels the clock change in November wouldn’t likely face the same reaction. Most likely, people would just happily go on with their lives.

Trump supports it, so it must be bad. We haven’t actually seen this stated publicly, but we have no doubt that, for many TDS sufferers, the president’s endorsement is enough to make them oppose the bill.

We at I&I are agnostic about whether we go on permanent daylight saving time, or permanent standard time, or, as some have suggested, split the difference like India has done.

Just end the back-and-forth. Pick a time and stick with it.

The problem is that if Congress doesn’t pass the Sunshine Protection Act, it will never get around to passing any other change, which means we will be stuck with the twice-annual clock-switching madness.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board

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