Lots of debate about DST and time zones and should we change them.
Around where I am in Boston, with DST, sunrise varies by over two hours from 05:06 to 07:22, and sunset varies by over four hours from 4:11pm to 8:25pm. (DST is really "sunrise stabilization time".)
What I think I hear underneath is that people want their schedules aligned to the sun. The want more sun in their day. They want their waking aligned to the sun and the end of their day aligned with the sun.
Then they run up against needing a bunch of states going in on change together, or even an act of Congress. The sad fact of astronomy is that summer days are over 15 hours but winter days are only 9 hours and maybe with that scarcity of daylight we're just not going to make everyone happy.
But, we can act locally starting any time. Businesses can change their hours. School districts can change their hours. There's nothing sacred about school starting at a time named "7:35 am" or whatever. DST or not, that time could even shift a couple times during the year, maybe in steps of half an hour. If I was running a coffee shop I'd be tempted to declare "opens at sunrise" (or an hour before sunrise in some places).
Act locally, start now.
1 comment:
Where I live (~110 W, 45 N), daylight savings time makes sense from about the start of May to the end of August. If that is when the switch happened, I might actually like it. As is, I don't see the point in switching in November and then back again in March.
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