Will Daylight Savings soon cease to exist?

Bella Lee, Staff writer

Daylight Saving Time is both a blessing and the bane of our existence.

While it is certainly nice to enjoy an extra hour of sunlight to welcome our spring and summer, it goes at a grisly cost of losing an hour of sleep. This hour of sleep is rewarded to us once again in November, with the end of Daylight Saving, but we have an hour of sunlight stolen from us.

There has been talk about whether Daylight Saving will be eliminated entirely.

The current concept of springing forward an hour in March and falling back an hour in November has been followed in the U.S. (with the exception of Hawaii and Arizona) since 2007, but the concept is much older.

Daylight Saving Time (in the term, “saving” is actually singular rather than plural) has its roots in train schedules, but it was put into practice in Europe and the United States to save fuel and power during World War I.

The U.S. kept Daylight Savings Time permanent during most of World War II. The idea

was put in place to conserve fuel and keep things standard. As the war came to a close in 1945, Gallup asked respondents how we should tell time. Only 17% wanted to keep what was then called “war time” all year.

During the energy crisis of the 1970s, permanent Daylight Savings Time was tried again in the winter of 1973-1974. The idea again was to conserve fuel and was a popular move at the time when President Richard Nixon signed the law in January 1974. But by the end of the month, Florida’s governor had called for the law’s repeal after eight schoolchildren were hit by cars in the dark. Schools across the country delayed start times until the sun came up.

The iteration of Daylight Saving Time as we know it has only been around for a little over 15 years, but it might be eliminated soon enough.

Earlier this month, Senator Marco Rubio introduced the Sunshine Protection Act in Florida in an attempt to end what he called an “antiquated practice.” While it passed unanimously in the Senate, it stalled in the House.

According to experts, getting rid of this practice could lead to health benefits, such as decreased risk of cardiac problems and strokes.

As humans need a good amount of sleep in order to function, Daylight Saving Time is definitely an archaic practice there are benefits to getting rid of it.

While it would be strange to not be able to have an extra hour of sleep every November, we would be able to enjoy more sunlight year-round.

Overall, there are more pros than there are cons with getting rid of the Daylight Saving/ Standard Time switch, so it is probably for the best that we move forward with trying to get rid of it once and for all.