Time for a change?

It is, I’m sad to report, once again time for the spring free-for-all over daylight saving time. Everybody has an opinion to share, sometimes two or three of them.

At 2 a.m. on the second Sunday in March the nation — most of it, anyway — “springs forward” by setting clocks ahead by one hour. It will not “fall back” an hour until the first Sunday in November. It is a chronological change much hated by some who see it as a commie plot or proof positive that Venusians really are running the show. Messing with the clocks causes them to come unglued.

Periodically, a brave lawmaker in Juneau will try to unstatus the quo and drive a stake in seasonally adjusted time’s heart. They have failed miserably, roasted by industries and businesses inexorably tied to schedules and daylight and the vagaries and rigidities of faraway markets and interests.

In the heap of legislation awaiting action in Alaska’s Capitol this year is Rep. Daniel Ortiz’s House Bill 31. It would have Alaska adopt daylight saving time year-round.

No more of this add-an-hour, subtract-an-hour stuff, no more springing forward, or falling back with the changing seasons. While studies show the changes offer few benefits, they are blamed for childhood obesity, car crashes, pedestrian accidents, heart attacks, depression, falls, strokes, increases in robberies, indigestion and cooties. Rutgers researchers calculated 343 lives per year could be saved by adopting year-round DST.

There are, of course, pesky details that first must to be hammered out in the measure, like getting Congress to amend federal law before Dec. 31, 2030, to allow states to observe DST throughout the calendar year.

Alaska is not alone. At least 32 states are fiddling with idea of Daylight Saving Time year-round.

A bipartisan bill pending in the U.S. Senate permanently would retain daylight saving time. First introduced in 2019, the so-called “Sunshine Protection Act of 2021” was reintroduced recently by U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., James Lankford, R-Okla., Roy Blunt, R-Mo., Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., Rick Scott, R-Fla., and Ed Markey, D-Mass.

The proposal would not change time zones or require states and territories to adopt DST. The annual time changes already are ignored in Hawaii and Arizona, along with American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands. The Navajo Nation is on daylight saving time, even in Arizona, but the Hopi Reservation, entirely surrounded by the Navajo Nation, is not.

How did we get here? Since mankind began painting on cave walls, the idea of time and using sunlight efficiently has underpinned civilization.

As for daylight saving time, blame Benjamin Franklin, who, while in Paris was rudely awakened by spring daylight and jokingly dashed off his tongue-in-cheek, “An Economical Project for Diminishing the Cost of Light,” and sent it to the editor of the “Journal de Paris” in 1784. He suggested Parisians get out of bed before noon and go to bed earlier to save candles. The piece drew little attention until dusted off by Englishman William Willett — who did not get the joke — in his 1907 pamphlet, “The Waste of Daylight.”

British railroads forced a single standard time in 1840 — London Time, it was called — and U.S. and Canadian railroads followed suit in 1883. Before that, it was a local matter — and often confusing.

The United States and many European nations adopted daylight saving time — known in Europe as Summer Time — in World War I. Germany in 1916 set its clocks ahead two hours to save fuel that could be used in war efforts.

The U.S. adopted DST in 1918 to conserve energy, thanks to the efforts of Pittsburgh industrialist Robert Garland, the U.S. “father of daylight saving.” It was seen as “Big Government” interference and repealed in 1919, but the idea did not die.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt instituted year-round DST in World War II. It was called “War Time,” from 1942 to 1945. From 1945 to 1966, it was optional, and resulted in a confused hodgepodge.

Some major cities, such as New York City, kept DST; others returned to a permanent standard time after the war. The Uniform Time Act of 1966 mandated the official start and end dates of DST in the country as March and November, and divided the country into different time zones.

We have been arguing about daylight saving time ever since.

Ortiz’s bill has been in the House State Affairs Committee since Feb. 18 and may remain there for the duration, if the past is any guide. That would be too bad. It is an interesting idea, worthy of debate.

And to think, it all began with a joke.

Paul Jenkins is editor of the AnchorageDailyPlanet.com, a division of Porcaro Communications.

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