I get that it's subjective, but my subjective view is that having sunlight after work is more important, and I stand by that.
First, the weather tends to be worse in the morning. It tends to be colder. Fog is more likely. Ice on the sidewalks and roads is more likely.
Second, people's schedules are generally more synced in the mornings. People tend to go to work or school over a narrower morning time span than the evening time span in which people come home.
Morning darkness then means you are putting the time when you have the most people traveling at the time you have the worst travel conditions of the day.
In the northern parts of the US, permanent DST wouldn't even give most people much usable after-work sunlight. Here in the vicinity of Seattle, for example, on the last day of DST this year sunset is 5:43 PM. If you are a 9 to 5 worker your commute likely uses up most or all of your evening sunlight.
Plenty of folks that study chronobiology do not think it is subjective. The Society for Research on Biological Rhythms:
> Local and national governments around the world are currently considering the elimination of the annual switch to and from Daylight Saving Time (DST). As an international organization of scientists dedicated to studying circadian and other biological rhythms, the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms (SRBR) engaged experts in the field to write a Position Paper on the consequences of choosing to live on DST or Standard Time (ST). The authors take the position that, based on comparisons of large populations living in DST or ST or on western versus eastern edges of time zones, the advantages of permanent ST outweigh switching to DST annually or permanently. Four peer reviewers provided expert critiques of the initial submission, and the SRBR Executive Board approved the revised manuscript as a Position Paper to help educate the public in their evaluation of current legislative actions to end DST.
* https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31170882/
* https://doi.org/10.1177/0748730419854197
World Federation of Societies for Chronobiology:
> In summary, the scientific literature strongly argues against the switching between DST and Standard Time and even more so against adopting DST permanently. […]
* https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2019.0094...
* https://doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2019.00944
Article that links to various other societies and such:
* https://herf.medium.com/why-standard-time-is-better-e586b500...
Some people like to wake up at 5 AM to work. Some people like to wake up at 5 AM to play. Some people like to play and go to bed at 5 AM.
The source of the issue is the fixed 9 to 5 work hour instead of which hour we call 9 AM. So use your tooth and nail for whoever tells to work from 9 to 5 instead of the divided opinion of when exactly is 9 AM.
I think that most people would want to switch to permanent daylight saving time.
This moves the sunset "later" in the day so that you get more sunlight after work.
This is good for restaurants and leisure activities.
Arguments against this typically come in a few flavors every time this subject comes up:
> But the sun should be overhead at noon.
> But kids will have to go to school in the dark.
> But employers could just start work earlier.
> But early risers prefer to enjoy time before work than after work.
It's still more correct than DST.
>And who wants to start work earlier?
You ARE starting work earlier with DST. That's the whole point. I sometimes wonder if there's some fundamental difference in understanding. To me the time in your watch is just a numeric value the _actual_ time of day is the location of the sun on the sky.
We're fine with getting rid of the time shift, but if we're going to do that, it makes more sense that the back half of the day have sunlight for longer. People need to do things and kids need to play. Most folks aren't going to work to plow fields anymore.
I think most people would agree on two things: (1) that having time after work to do things during daylight hours is ideal, and (2) that the work hours they already have are fine.
A shift in working hours might be fine for childless adults, but it doesn't work for most people. People have to be present to get their kids ready for school or daycare, and you're never going to get teacher's unions to agree that they should be in the doors of a school by 6am to receive students.
So... this fall, no shift. For now or ever. Boom, done. Yes, the days get a bit shorter, but you're still talking about a 6:45pm sunset in Texas, which gives people about 2 hours of active time in the evenings, which is preferable to the 45 minutes previously.
I live in Scandinavia some 500km South of the Arctic circle. Let me tell you that it's very obvious that the sun is one hour off at "midnight" in Summer. If we kept DST in Winter it would be even more noticeable. It would also mean that there'd be some 3 months per year where I need to go to and leave from work in complete darkness. At least right now I get to wake up to some sunlight in December.
Daytime is fundamentally an astronomic concept. Proponents of permanent DST could at least be intellectually honest and admit they want everyone to get up an hour earlier rather than force everyone to pretend that 11am is actually 12pm.
> Yes, the days get a bit shorter, but you're still talking about a 6:45pm sunset in Texas
That's cute. I just walked back home from work and the sun was already setting here at 5:30. And it's still Autumn.
To me it looks like it's mainly the Southernmost states and countries that are pushing for this. Which is especially strange since actual tropical countries don't seem to have issues with standard time.
It's much easier to change our clocks twice a year.
The logistics problem seems overstated, because countries that have different time zones manage fine.
Much as we’d all like to be special snowflakes who march to the beat of our own drum, the fact of the matter is that society moves as a unit, and our happiness is often dictated by where it is moving to.
It is not subjective according to the scientists.