We’re all tired, and not just physically.
People are tired of slogging away until dark every day when they should be on the playground with their kids or taking invigorating walks with their dogs.
Their kids are tired of getting home in the dark.
The dogs are tired because — well, maybe because dogs are just lazy (sorry, Brandy; you're adorable anyway).
Everyone's tired of partisan bickering and unilateral decision-making, tired of the "other's" inability to see things that should be crystal clear. They want more sunlight on how key legislative decisions are being made.
Clearly not all this fatigue — emotional, physical and spiritual — can be laid at the feet of elected officials But they could go a long way to alleviating some of it. And now, finally, at both state and federal levels, they may be about to do it.
"Daylight saving time shall be the official time in this state," reads the bipartisan Iowa House File 2331. That's followed by an explanation of the solar time of the ninetieth meridian of longitude west of Greenwich, England, which is followed by a bunch of crossed-out words of existing law and then some 30 paragraphs on insurance contracts relating to the proposed change.
The bill would have it take effect once the federal government grants permission for states to adopt year-round daylight saving time. Either way, the early darkening of skies we all have to suffer through from November to March, aka Central Standard Time, would be replaced by that extra hour of evening daylight.
For some of us, this prospect feels like a shot in the arm of adrenaline … hope … Vitamin D. Irrationally so, perhaps, because it's just one more hour of sunlight a day. But it comes at that very time of day when work life usually shifts to personal life, and it feels like a cruel ruse to have daylight snatched away.
Daylight saving time dates back to World War I
Changing the time twice a year began during World War I, when Germany wanted to save the coal used to power lights by taking more advantage of daylight. In the U.S., daylight saving was abolished after that war before it was reinstated during the 1940s. They fiddled around with it some more during the oil embargo of the 1970s, and subsequently in 1986 and 2005. But it still always ends in fall.
Fifteen states have already passed legislation or resolutions to make daylight saving time year-round, all contingent on federal approval. On March 15, the U.S. Senate unanimously approved the Sunshine Protection Act of 2021, with almost no warning or debate. The U.S. House held a hearing on a similar measure.
A USA Today op-ed piece jointly authored last March by Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state and Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida championed the Senate bill, saying permanent daylight saving time could reduce seasonal depression, heart problems and stroke risks and increase economic activity and energy savings.
Standard time or daylight time? Polling reveals a divide
Still, some people feel equally committed to holding onto standard time. A 2019 Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found 70% of Americans don't like switching back and forth between times. But 40% would actually prefer keeping standard time while 30% would save daylight.
Registered opposition to the Iowa bill comes from the Iowa Chamber Alliance, several cities' chambers of commerce, and the Iowa Broadcasters associations. Brad Epperly, the lobbyist for those groups, said the opposition was based on those chambers being in communities bordering other states and potential problems coordinating schedules.
Only Iowa Mental Health Advocacy was registered for it. For people with brain illnesses like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and schizoaffective disorder, turning the clock forward and backward can both have serious negative effects, said lobbyist Leslie Carpenter. "Changes in structure and schedule can have the most serious impacts" on their mental health, she said.
Her 31-year-old son, who has schizoaffective disorder, fears going out when it gets dark in fall. "It makes his voices worse, his paranoia worse," she said. "Many times he's gone into psychosis." And that resulted in hospitalization.
Carpenter stresses that her preference for saving daylight is anecdotal and based on observations. She has, she notes, been contacted by a couple of people who advocate keeping standard time year-round, one of them a psychologist. But she says she has yet to receive any research supporting that preference.
One study claims that an hour more of light in the evenings results in 19 minutes less sleep a night, which in turn interferes with circadian rhythms. Some scientists suggest that without natural light to regulate them, the body's natural defenses could wear down. Some then make the leap to obesity, metabolic disorders, cardiovascular issues, depression and even cancer.
A New York Times piece says arguments claiming public health benefits either way haven't been well studied. It's "near impossible to conduct national experiments on the topic," it says. Some results are contradictory. It also says business leaders, academics and U.S. senators of both parties favor standardizing daylight saving.
So do late-night talk show hosts, apparently. The day the U.S. Senate passed the bill, Jimmy Kimmel said he was proud to be an American, and hailed the idea that "the sun shall never again set at lunchtime on Christmas Day, and may God bless us, every one.”
Jimmy Fallon quipped, “Today everyone in the Senate was like, ‘What happens now? We’ve never passed a bill before — this is weird.’”
Murray and Rubio also wrote, "researchers have suggested that we’d experience fewer car accidents and evening robberies, thanks to a more regular schedule and the extra hour of sun later in the day."
Look, I really want daylight saving time to be the norm, but the skeptic in me has to question claims like that. They remind me of a late friend's reaction every time a weekend storm was forecast, and people went into panic buying so that staples like milk bread and toilet paper disappeared from store shelves.
"Don't they keep enough of those things on hand?" she'd wonder. Which, likewise, makes me wonder: Couldn't robbers just wait an hour?
After spending much of my childhood criss-crossing the globe between India and America, and adapting to 10.5-hour or 11.5-hour time differences, I can testify that's a tough adjustment. But one hour should be manageable for most.
Isn't everyone more resilient and upbeat with more sunlight in their day? Could sticking with daylight saving, especially on cold winter nights like ours, help cure the defiance that leads to partisan standoffs? Well, no, but if I could regularly share a glass of wine on the deck after work with a person of the opposite political persuasion, I'm pretty sure we'd find some common ground.
One step at a time. First, Let the sunshine in. Then maybe, love, enlightenment, and a new age of Aquarius.
