During these troubled times, when we can’t seem to muster bipartisan support for anything (not even the right to vote, or the right to travel on safe bridges, or the need to save the planet from burning up), I have been searching long and hard for an issue that might actually work across partisan lines, an issue that I just so happen to agree with.
I finally found one!
Maybe it’s just me, but I loathe darkness at 4:45 p.m. Leaving work when the sky is black totally sucks, as I’ll discover again next week when the clocks “fall back” to Standard Time. Maybe you don’t mind the impulse to call it a day and crawl into bed when sunlight goes away, but studies show a strong link between early darkness and seasonal depression. There are economic impacts as well; people don’t shop as much as they would if the sun were still out. And people don’t walk or bike for exercise as much when the day ends early.
That’s why I’m a staunch supporter of the Senate’s bipartisan Sunshine Protection Act of 2021, co-sponsored by Democrat Patty Murray and Republican Marco Rubio. Now there’s a duo you don’t see joined at the hip very often. But here they are writing in unison, contending that Daylight Savings Time should be permanent all year long, “so Americans can enjoy having sunlight during their most productive hours of the day…we don’t know too many Americans who are happy about dark afternoons during the winter.”
Murray even took up the cause on the Senate floor yesterday: “Americans want more sunshine and less depression…This Sunday millions of Americans will once again roll their clocks back, and in no time, next spring they’ll have to roll their clocks forward – and for what? I don’t know a single person who loves to go through the trouble of figuring out whether the microwave or the oven has the hour right or anyone who looks forward to the sun setting earlier and earlier every winter.”
OK, she was perhaps a tad too dramatic; I doubt many people are traumatized by the five-second chore of resetting the microwave and oven. She and Rubio were also a tad too hyperbolic when they wrote that “the overwhelming will of the people” is to make DST permanent year round. A national poll in 2019 reported that only 31 percent of Americans feel that way, 40 percent want DST abolished, and 28 percent like things the way they are. On the other hand, 19 states have passed laws or resolutions aiming to make DST permanent – basically symbolic moves, because they can’t actually do it unless Congress gives the OK.
There’s a similar bill in the House – chiefly sponsored by a Florida Republican, which makes sense, because there’s strong political support down there for giving tourists an extra hour of beach sunlight…and, more importantly, giving seniors an extra hour of sunlight to run errands (like picking up prescriptions) because so many of them are fearful of driving in the dark. That’s a major concern for seniors everywhere.
One big argument for the status quo, however, is that a permanent DST would keep the skies dark in early morning when kids get up and out the door for school. Parents who are already incensed about masks and the prospects of their kids learning about racism would surely go ballistic if the early winter sun of Standard Time were abolished. But is it better to have 4:45 darkness, when so many kids are heading home from after-school activities? I guess I’m more worried about the seniors – and the bicyclists (like myself) heading home from work.
So let’s keep the sunlight when it will do the most good – and, for once, bravo Marco Rubio! Could such a wonderful thing ever actually happen? Nah. Not unless we get thumbs up from Joe Manchin.
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Today’s photo credit: Yours truly.