How Permanent Daylight Saving Time Would Affect Daily Life

Setting all of your non-smart appliances forward and backwards an hour could soon be a thing of the past after the House passed a bill that would make daylight saving time permanent.

The Sunshine Protection Act now moves to the Senate and would then need President Donald Trump's signature to become law.

But what exactly is daylight savings time, why do we even have it, and why do people hate the back and forth so much, and, if it were to be made permanent, what would that even mean?

Daylight saving time is intended to shift an hour of daylight from the morning into the evening during the summer months. Since people are generally more active after work or school than before, later sunsets allow people to make better use of the daylight. This can have emotional benefits to individuals and also help to increase economic activity.

And when Daylight saving time was introduced during World War I by Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States, the hope was that the extra hour of daylight in the evening would help to reduce the amount of coal needed to power street and house lighting, which then made up a large amount of global energy usage. Many countries subsequently followed suit.

In recent years, many countries have decided to end seasonal clock changes. They often find the benefits to be minimal in the modern age. Lighting is now just a tiny percentage of global energy usage, and shifting time back or forwards an hour has been linked to temporary increases in health issues such as sleep deprivation and heart attacks.

And, in an increasingly connected world, changing times can make international commerce confusing.

Now, the United States looks set to be the latest country to adopt a permanent summertime nationwide. Hawaii and most of Arizona already choose to ignore the twice-annual time skip.

In a strong show of bipartisan support, the House voted 308-171 to make daylight saving time permanent, but gave individual states the ultimate choice in the matter. The idea has popular support, with 43% of Americans saying they would prefer permanent daylight saving time.

Simply put, clocks would stay one hour ahead all year, with no "fall back" each November. This would have minimal impact in states closer to the equator because winter days are longer than they are farther north.

In Northern states, however, there would be much later winter sunrises. In the northern Midwest, sunrise could be as late as 9:30 a.m. during the winter solstice. In Anchorage, Alaska, winter sunrise would move from roughly 10:15 a.m. to 11:15 a.m.

Those in favour argue that there would be more daylight after work year-round, increasing opportunities for outdoor recreation and commerce, as well as no need to change clocks.

The largest downside, however, would be darker winter mornings in the northern states; some opponents say this could compromise morning commute safety, per TIME.

The United States adopted permanent DST in January 1974 amid an oil and energy crisis triggered when Middle Eastern states embargoed the United States. While initial public support was around 80%, it quickly decreased after several weeks of very dark winter mornings and reports of kids having to commute to school in the dark.

By October of the same year, Congress ended the experiment.