Rebuilding Rob

I hate Fall Back.

I hate Spring forward. I hate adjusting the clocks every six months. I hate gaining than losing an hour of sunlight. I hate losing, then gaining an hour of sleep time. I hate the entire concept of “daylight time“. I hate the entire concept of “standard time“.

In fact, there are only two things that I can really think of that I like about having to change our clocks once every six months (and one of these things no longer applies, as of the last few years)

• I like that the time change serves as a reminder to check the batteries in my smoke detectors. (I know, this is a stretch. But I’m trying to think of something positive.)
• Before daylight saving was extended 1 week, I liked the fact that fall back used to occur just before Halloween, thereby giving kids and “extra“ hour of darkness in which they could trick-or-treat ( but since this longer applies, I have to hang my hat on the whole smoke detector thing)

Here in America, Hawaii and Arizona (except for the Navajo nation) do not take part in daylight savings. Because of Hawaii’s proximity to the equator, the effects of adding one more hour of daylight to their days is negligible. On the flipside, Arizona chooses not to participate in daylight savings, since they are in a desert and it makes a little sense to add an extra hour sunlight to the warmest time of the year in the hottest part of the entire country. Furthermore, the 5 American territories do not take part in daylight saving.

To the best of my understanding, Arizona spends six months of the year operating on Pacific time and the other six months operating on Mountain time; which makes very quick and easy workaround.

At this point, it’s common knowledge that the whole reasoning behind daylight saving time was to conserve energy. The rationale was that if there was an extra hour of sunlight, it would be less of a need to turn on lights, using electricity. I’ve heard (and I don’t know if there’s actual data to back this up) that the the amount of energy that the United States saves by not turning on lights for the extra hour during daylight saving is negligible.

It’s also interesting to know that in 2021, the US senate passed the Sunshine Protection Act, which would permanently move the United States to Daylight Saving . Basically, this means that one year we would “spring forward“ forward permanently and not “fall back“. As of this writing, the US House of Representatives has yet to vote on the Sunshine Protection Act.

For more information on daylight savings, check out this page from USA Facts

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