The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons Barron’s own blog.

Kamala Harris pledges, “We won’t go back.” Tonight, however, we all will. At 2 a.m. tomorrow morning we set the clocks back an hour. Sure, it means an extra hour of sleep, but, for many of us, this is a real downer. Except for sunshine states like Arizona and Hawaii, it will be black as midnight at 4:15 in the afternoon. We’ll still be at work, but the melatonin in our bodies will say we should be going to sleep. Even for those not clinically diagnosed with seasonal affective disorder, our moods will tumble downward.

The problem is more than psychological. Our metabolism slows down, we feel draggy, and we eat more carbs to comfort ourselves (some of us don’t need much encouragement). Doctors say that the change affects our hearts as well. Farmers say cows have difficulty producing milk while adjusting to the time change. I can’t speak with authority on that.

Did you ever consider that it doesn’t have to be this way? Let’s get Congress and a new President to stop the twice-a-year seasonal zig-zags. Health practitioners (including the American Medical Association) urge making standard time permanent to keep our clocks in sync with our biology. They cite studies showing that there are more heart attacks with the spring forward in March. By contrast, others say keeping daylight saving is energy efficient, though there are conflicting studies and the reduced use of electricity is minimal. Retailers long maintained that DST meant people in shops and restaurants later, increasing economic benefits, though online shopping has mitigated even those results. AAA documents an increase in car crashes with the early return to darkness. The organization has dubbed the week after clocks turn back “Drowsy Driving Prevention week.”

Some states have considered going it alone. Massachusetts lawmakers have even pondered going to eastern Canada’s Atlantic Time Zone, also in effect in South America. The Atlantic Zone concept might work if the whole Northeast were aligned. But, as I face midnight in the afternoon, I agree with Democratic Senator Ed Markey and Republican Senator Marco Rubio whose bipartisan Sunshine Protection Act would make daylight saving time the year-round standard. The Senate actually passed it in 2022, and they did it unanimously! The House of Representatives has sat on the bill.

In 1985, Markey started his crusade with different Republicans to lengthen daylight saving time. In 1985, he got DST extended three weeks. Again, in 2005, he got it moved from the first Sunday in April to the second Sunday in March and pushed back in the fall by moving its end date from the last Sunday in October to the first Sunday in November.

Despite my deeply held aversion to falling back every November and waiting till the first week in March to spring ahead, I’ve come to think that what matters now is to stop the lurching back and forth. Pick a time and stick with it year-round. We actually had a permanent standard for one year under Richard Nixon during the energy crisis of 1973. President Gerald Ford stopped it when the crisis subsided.

Bipartisan support for a uniform standard shouldn’t be harder to achieve than the infrastructure bill or the chips act. Meanwhile, I’ll be counting the days until DST starts on Sunday, March 9, 2025.