Re: The Sunshine Protection Act, sponsored by Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.)
The Sunshine Protection Act is a misnomer. It is perhaps intentionally designed to appease the American voter and for sure designed to take advantage of those citizens who are unaware of what the act really does. “Permanent Daylight Savings Time—sure sounds good to me. Let’s do it.”
There is no such thing as year-round Daylight Savings Time (DST). During its usage, we simply get an extra hour of daylight in the afternoon, but we also get one less hour of daylight in the morning. The ovine call to make DST permanent by way of the proposed bill in the Senate puts on display an obvious lack of forethought. Instead of pushing the legislation in the spring, I suggest attempting its passage in the fall—sometime closer to November. That way, our population may more easily understand its consequences. If clocks were not turned back in the fall, much of America (depending on one’s latitude) would be commuting to work and school in the dark. Lights will have to be turned on one hour earlier, needlessly consuming precious energy. That jogger who likes to do her run first thing in the morning may be doing so before the sun has risen. Permanently setting your clocks ahead one hour would be the same experience as simply living in the time zone east of where one lives now. There would be no daylight saved; there would be no sunshine protected.
And doing away with DST altogether will deprive our country of its benefits. For many of us, the frustration endured by changing our clocks twice a year is a small price to pay for the joy gained by that extra hour of daylight we receive. Methinks too many Americans feel inconvenienced by the clock change, and those who think DST can be year-round simply may not understand how it works. If the Sunshine Protection Act gets passed, America will grasp its ramifications sometime during those several weeks before and indeed after the coming winter solstice.
The proposed bill passed the Senate unanimously. Not one of our senators has the horse sense to comprehend its consequences. It’s downright jaw-dropping! And now some dozen more Congressmen have hopped on board to endorse passage. Don’t our politicians think things through? America has become a source of doubt around the world. Forget about our global political policy. Our leaders in Washington can’t even understand the concept of Daylight Savings Time for our domestic well-being. It leads one to believe that they literally don’t know what they’re doing.
Reed Bard
Wyoming
