Most european countries start daylight saving time in the early morning of March 27, with clocks set one hour faster and daylight saving time lasting until the last Sunday in October. The U.S. Senate passed a bill on March 15 that supports no longer switching times every year starting next year, but fixing daylight saving time to the annual universal time. Daylight Saving Time has been controversial since its inception, with opponents arguing that the timing adjustment affects people's physical health and does not meet the original intention of saving energy.
On March 27, most countries in Europe ushered in daylight saving time.
U.S. legislative daylight saving time is permanentThe U.S. Senate voted March 15 to pass a bill that supports no longer switching times twice a year from 2023 onwards, fixing the current daylight saving time to the time of the year. At present, the bill still needs to be considered by the House of Representatives, and if passed in the House, it will be signed by President Biden to take effect.
According to Npriz, the Senate unanimously supported the bill. The office of House majority leader Anderson Hoyer, a Democrat, said the House would not vote on the bill for the time being, but at a hearing last week, lawmakers from both parties supported the bill.
The United States initially adopted daylight saving time during World War I in 1918 to conserve energy. Most parts of the United States currently have about 8 months of daylight saving time each year, with the rest in standard time (also known as winter time). According to Npriz, some health experts believe that the twice-yearly switching time is detrimental to health. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine supports the implementation of standard hours throughout the year.
In 1974, the United States tried to adopt daylight saving time throughout the year, but it caused controversy and was abandoned in the fall of that year. But in recent years, there has been a growing call to fix daylight saving time as a whole year. Since 2018, 18 of the 50 U.S. states have passed laws clarifying that if Congress approves daylight saving time as a year-round time, those states will comply with it.
A survey conducted last autumn by the U.S. "Youguan" polling company and the British "Economist" weekly showed that 63% of American adults want to cancel the twice-yearly "checklist", and most hope to fix daylight saving time as the time of year.
On March 15, the U.S. Senate approved the Daylight Saving Time Perpetuation Act.
Europe proposes to abolish the time system transitionAs early as September 2018, the European Commission proposed to end the EU's practice of changing the time of winter and summer every year. In fact, the European Commission, based on the results of a poll, recommended that the winter-daylight saving time conversion system be abolished from October 2019. The online survey received responses from around 4.6 million people in the 28 eu member states (the UK had not yet left the EU at the time), and more than 80 percent wanted to cancel the two time-based transitions.
A survey released by Germany in 2018 also showed that most Germans want to abolish the eu's long-standing winter and daylight saving time conversion system. According to the German news agency, the health insurance company DAK surveyed more than 3,500 Germans, and the results showed that about 80% of the respondents believed that this practice was unnecessary and should be abandoned; about 25% believed that the time transition brought them health problems, including fatigue, lethargy, poor sleep, inability to concentrate, poor temper and so on.
In March 2019, the European Parliament voted to abolish the winter and summer time conversion system, which is scheduled to be implemented from April 2021. The bill stipulates that EU member states have 2 years to plan and implement on their own, deciding whether to use daylight saving time or winter time.
Under the new bill, governments that opt for permanent daylight saving time will adjust their clocks for the last time on the last Sunday of March 2021. For those countries that choose to permanently use winter time, i.e., standard time, the last clock adjustment was on the last Sunday of October 2021. However, due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the adjustment clocks of EU member states have been shelved to this day.
Russia is vast, spanning 11 time zones and has undergone several adjustments to its time standards. In 1981, the Soviet Union introduced daylight saving time; in 2011, then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev reduced the Russian time zone to 9 and abolished the winter and daylight saving time conversion to permanent daylight saving time. He believes that frequent time adjustments can disrupt people's biological clocks and even interfere with the habits of livestock. But in winter, many residents of Russia's northern region complain that it gets dark too soon. In June 2014, the Russian State Duma (the lower house of parliament) passed a bill to abolish permanent daylight saving time and use standard time (winter time) throughout the year.
Clock inside the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, France. On March 26, 2019, the European Parliament passed a resolution to abolish the conversion system and plan to implement it from April 2021.
One piece of land, two time zonesIn the early morning of March 25, Israel entered daylight saving time. In Palestine, the time did not adjust until the early morning of the 27th, and more than 120,000 Palestinians worked in Israeli or West Bank Jewish settlements, which had a particularly large impact on them. For example, in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, bus lines run according to Israeli time, but most passengers still use Palestinian time; in West jerusalem and East Jerusalem, some mobile phones and applications are also set differently, so there is a case of crossing a road and the mobile phone time is automatically dialed forward or back an hour.
Many Palestinians are late in the chaos because of daylight saving time and have nearly lost their jobs. "Special attention needs to be paid to when you appear in companies, synagogues, stadiums," said Salomon, a Jerusalem resident, who in some neighborhoods of Jerusalem uses Palestinian time instead of Israeli time.
In most years, the time for The Palestinians and Israelis to enter or exit daylight saving time is only a few days apart, but in some years the "time difference" is longer. In 2013, Palestine withdrew from daylight saving time in late September, and Israel did not withdraw from daylight saving time until late October due to internal political strife. The one-month time difference has caused a lot of trouble for those who need to work across borders and those who live at the Palestinian-Israeli border.
The change in time has also caused some special staff to "suffer from it". According to Reuters, Queen Elizabeth II treasured 450, 600 and 50 different styles of clocks at Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace and The Summer Palace of Holyroodhouse. Every year on the Sunday when the winter and daylight saving time systems are changed, there will be a team of watchmakers, which will take more than 40 hours to adjust the time of these clocks.
Whenever this time comes, Middleton, who works at the British Watch Society Clock Museum, works even harder, having to complete a time correction of 4,000 clocks on the day. Daylight saving time is fine, but winter time is "miserable", because the clock hand cannot be turned counterclockwise, so daylight saving time only needs to be dialed clockwise by one hour, and in winter time, the hour hand of each clock needs to be dialed 11 times.
A staff member at a watch museum in the UK adjusts the clock.
Make people fatter and dumber?The daylight saving time concept was first proposed to the British Parliament in 1907 by the British architect William Willett. Willett produced a brochure called "Waste of Daylight" to explain why daylight saving energy and making the most of daylight. This move allows people to go to bed early and get up early to use the daytime time, so daylight saving time is also called "saving daylight time".
On April 30, 1916, Germany first adopted daylight savings during World War I, saving 15% of gas and electricity. On 21 May of the same year, the United Kingdom followed suit when Parliament passed the historic Daylight Saving Time Act 1916.
After the oil crisis of 1973-1974, most european countries began to use daylight saving time in 1976, and EU member states set the clock one hour faster every year on the last Sunday of March to implement daylight saving time; on the last Sunday of October, the clock was set back one hour to restore standard time (winter time).
But the imposition of daylight saving time has been controversial. A 2015 survey showed that more than 75% of French people do not want to implement daylight saving time, and two-thirds of French people say that daylight saving time does not have an energy saving effect, but adversely affects work and life rules. In recent years, research has pointed out that the adverse effects of daylight saving time on people's sleep and biological clocks are more obvious.
Suddenly less than an hour of sleep, easy to cause the body's biological clock chaos, serious cases even lead to hormonal imbalance, and will affect people's psychology, emotions and even work efficiency. Medical research says that daylight saving time is prone to depression and can also lead to car accidents. The study found that within two or three days of daylight saving time each year, traffic accidents in Canada increased by 5 to 7 percent more than usual, and workers were less productive.
Renneberg, a time biologist at the University of Munich in Germany, said: "This [daylight saving time] raises the likelihood of diabetes, depression and sleep and study problems. That is, Europeans will become fatter, dumber, and more grumpy. The data shows that the "impact" of daylight saving time on health will last for about 20 days, and the incidence of some major diseases will increase significantly in the following days, such as a 25% increase in the incidence of cancer and a 10% increase in the incidence of heart disease. Studies have shown that this has a greater potential impact on people such as the elderly, children, pregnant women, and people with chronic diseases.
Volvosk, a member of the European Parliament, led the drafting of a report and presented it to the European Parliament, citing the results of several studies showing that the time-shift disrupts the body's biological clock and is associated with cardiovascular disease or immune system disease.
Daylight saving time is approaching, and a staff member in Massachusetts is ready to set the time up an hour.
Energy savings outweigh the losses?In September 2016, Turkey made a decision to adopt daylight saving time for many years to come, bringing Turkish time three hours earlier than Greenwich Mean Time. In this regard, a netizen named Demirell wrote on social media "Twitter": "We don't know whether we live in Antarctica or Turkey, it seems to live in a state of 6 months of day and 6 months of night." ”
Noy, a German, has opposed the implementation of daylight saving time for years, not only refusing to adjust the watch, but also sending his children to school an hour later than their classmates. The wayward move repeatedly took her to court and was fined about $500. Noy, a 59-year-old mother of four, launched an anti-daylight saving time campaign in 1990, arguing that the measure would cause her children to wake up an hour earlier than normal. To that end, she set up an anti-daylight saving time organization and solicited the signatures of supporters everywhere.
In addition to determining that the time transition would be detrimental to health, opponents argue that daylight saving time does not save energy. Statistics released by the French Agency for Environment and Energy Control in 2010 show that the introduction of daylight saving time can save france at least 440 million kWh of electricity per year, equivalent to the total electricity consumption of about 800,000 households. But the data also shows that this is only equivalent to 1% of France's annual electricity consumption.
Daylight savings have been practiced in North America for decades in order to save energy. However, Antweiler, a professor at the University of British Columbia's Schoed Business School in Canada, pointed out that although the implementation of daylight saving time will shorten the lighting time, many families use air conditioning in summer evenings and heat up in autumn mornings for longer periods, which can be said to be more than worth the loss.
Reuters quoted the Us Congressional Research Service as reporting that multiple studies have shown limited energy savings during daylight savings. Germany's Ministry of the Environment has said that although daylight savings on the electricity needed for lighting at night, it consumes more resources for heating in the morning, especially in relatively cold months such as March, April and October.
European countries such as France and Germany are beginning to rethink the rationality of daylight saving time. Volvosk said in a debate in the European Parliament: "New technologies and multiple lifestyles mean that we no longer gain anything (from the time shift) and we don't actually save (energy)." ”