With the U.S. Senate passing a bill to make DST permanent, what impacts could that have on West Michigan? Meteorologist Michael Behrens takes a look!
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — In a rare bit of bipartisanship and solidarity out of the U.S. Senate this week, the body unanimously approved a measure to keep the country on daylight saving time year round.
Michigan Senator Gary Peters said the following about the bill:
“I believe it makes the most practical sense to have one time system – as opposed to changing our clocks twice a year. The Sunshine Protection Act unanimously passed the Senate and now heads to the House of Representatives.”
The will to keep the U.S. from changing our clocks is strong and seemingly across all walks of life. In fact, 28 states are considering new or 2021 carryover bills addressing daylight saving time.
Michigan has already passed a bill in the House to switch to full time DST as long as Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania also made that switch. The bill passed the House in April 2021, but remains in a Senate committee as of writing.
While it is tempting to only think about the positive impacts of such a move, like long summer evenings and never seeing a sunset before 6 p.m., the change would have some drawbacks as well. This would be felt particularly by school-aged children and teens who walk to school or the bus stop.
The reason being these students would see a much larger proportion of the year with these commutes on foot taking place before sunrise.
Currently, we only see this happen from roughly Oct. 20 through Nov. 5, then we fall back, with darkness returning from Dec. 9 through Jan. 27. Under permanent DST, we would see sunrise after 8 a.m. from roughly Oct. 20 through March 10.
We would see a jump from roughly 67 mornings dark until 8 a.m. to 142 under permanent DST.
While the matter is waiting to be taken up by the House of Representatives, many just want the time changes to stop and now, that is one step closer to happening. We will need to watch where this legislation goes from here.
-- Meteorologist Michael Behrens
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Published March 15, 2022 at 6:02 PM EDT
Steven Senne
/
AP
A clock technician adjusts the hands on a large outdoor clock under construction at Electric Time Company in Medfield, Mass, last year, just days before daylight saving time was set to end.Updated March 16, 2022 at 12:21 PM ET
The Senate passed a bill Tuesday that would make daylight saving time permanent across the U.S. beginning in 2023. The so-called Sunshine Protection Act of 2021 was approved by unanimous consent, but would still require House approval and President Biden's signature to become law.
For those wishing for an end to annual clock shifting, this most recent push in Congress is perhaps better late than never.
"We don't have to keep doing this stupidity anymore. And why we would enshrine this in our laws and keep it for so long is beyond me," Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., one of the sponsors of the bill, said on the Senate floor.
"Hopefully, this is the year that this gets done. And pardon the pun, but this is an idea whose time has come," he added.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer's office tells NPR that there are no immediate plans to vote on daylight saving time, but notes the House Committee on Energy and Commerce had a hearing on it last week and there's bipartisan support for it.
Daylight saving time currently makes up roughly eight months of the year, with the remainder counterintuitively called standard time.
Daylight saving time began as a bid to pack more hours of sunlight into the day during the summer months and cut down on energy use, though critics question how effective it's been toward that goal.
Instead, health experts say switching our clocks twice a year has led to an uptick in sleep deprivation and other health problems. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine supports a year-round national standard time.
An Economist/YouGov poll from last fall found that 63% of U.S. adults want to eliminate the biannual changing of clocks. It also found that more people support instituting daylight saving time permanently rather than standard time.
Over the last four years, at least 18 states have passed laws to permanently switch to daylight saving time, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, though federal law must first be changed to allow it.
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