I have mixed feelings about many of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s policies, but he will always be a hero to me. I can’t help but admire his determination to end the semi-annual, pointless and expensive ritual of changing our clocks to observe daylight saving time during the spring and summer months. After several failed attempts to advance it in Congress, the senator has once again revived his bill, the Sunshine Protection Act. It would put America on permanent daylight saving time.
I am agnostic about whether we move to permanent daylight saving (brighter evenings and darker mornings) or stick with standard time (brighter mornings and darker evenings) year-round. But I am 100% anti-time change. The economic arguments for the change were always questionable, but our modern lifestyles make jumping back and forth by an hour more nonsensical than ever.
We originally started changing clocks in 1918 to save energy. The rumors about farmers starting it are false — time changing is bad for farmers because their animals notice the disruption to their routine, too. And for the record, there’s no evidence we save energy by changing clocks. But there are real costs to changing time. There are more heart attacks and car accidents as the entire country experiences collective jet lag.
