Abolish Daylight Saving Time already

Let's get rid of Daylight Saving Time, and timezones too, while we're at it.

Standard time is in use around the world now and most of the planet has the peculiar habit of adjusting the clock to borrow an hour of morning sun for the evening during the summer months. The former part makes sense: all of us having a roughly shared time system is useful for modern society. But why DST? What ends does it really serve? And why do we split the world into 24 timezones and a couple of half timezones? Wouldn't it be easier if we all shared the same hour and minute, not just the same second?

Why don't we abolish DST and timezones altogether? If the whole world shifted to Universal Time Coordinated (UTC), timezones and daylight saving time would no longer cause any disruptions, and having the entire planet on a shared clock would mean it would mean regions would become accustomed to making and adjusting their own schedules within that clock. For example a typical workday here in Ontario might be 14:00 to 22:00 while in Turkey it might be 06:00 to 14:00.

Daylight Saving Time would be moot as we would all set up our schedules to best reflect local lighting conditions. Many people already use UTC in, for example, the aviation and computer industries, and in this globalised economy it only makes sense to do so.

Goodbye, local time, UTC's time has come and it isn't shifting an hour this weekend.

If we can't at least get rid of timezones and DST, perhaps we could at least shift to Daylight Saving Time, call it Standard Time, and stop changing it?

Posted at 08:58 on March 08, 2007

The CN strike explained | musings | Let's get Guelph back on the GO

Halden writes at Thu Mar 8 10:35:07 2007...

I am not sure about a change to UTC but getting rid of DST is fabulous idea.

mecheng writes at Thu Mar 8 13:34:01 2007...

DST is employed to save money by keeping us awake and active during daylight hours, reducing the need for lighting. So it's very useful in northern locations.

The time zones provide a very convienient method of understanding what time of day it is in other parts of the world. So when I set up a conference call in with India, I know that if I schedule the meeting for 6:00AM my time, I'll be coming to work a little early, and they will be going home a little late.

23:00 universal time doesn't tell me if it's a working hour in another location, or if they are sleeping, so time zones do have a useful purpose.

Jeff Sipek writes at Sun Mar 18 03:35:47 2007...

Yeah, using UTC sounds great, but if you have to deal with other "timezones" things get really confusing really quickly.

mg writes at Sun Mar 9 21:47:50 EDT 2008...

You have to have other time zones. That has nothing to do with DST. I agree fully that DST needs to be abolished though. I'm all for that. As far as the time zones comment, that is just silly if you really think about it. How can it be the same time all over the globe at all given times? It can't be 3pm in the U.S. for example, and also be 3pm in Asia when they are sleeping, can it? Unless I am missing something about what you are saying, but the whole comment about getting rid of time zones and having some sort of universal time kind of paints that picture. It's just not possible to have a universal time, it doesn't make any sense.