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Will Montana Become America's Third State To Ditch Daylight Savings Time? (missoulian.com)

"Okay...twice every year Slashdot disses Daylight savings time," writes turkeydance, bringing a story from Montana, where lawmakers are proposing that the state should stop setting their clocks forward by one hour every spring. Similar legislation in several past sessions...failed to advance even out of committee. But SB206 passed committee unanimously and once on the floor, more than twice as many senators voted for it as against it. Now the House will take up SB206 during the session's second half, and likely with a renewed focus on the history of daylight saving time and what it would mean for Montana to become only the third state in the country not to observe it.
Daylight savings time has been opposed by a grassroots group of Montana farmers and ranchers, who have to sync their work schedule to the sun rather than the time on the clock, but similar legislation has also been introduced in Texas, California, Iowa, New Mexico, Michigan, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, and Washington. Daylight savings time was originally introduced as an energy-saving measure during World Wars I and II, and returned during the 1970s energy crisis. There's just one problem, reports Live Science. "No one really knows whether daylight saving time saves energy at all. Research is decidedly mixed on the subject, with some studies actually finding that daylight saving time boosts energy consumption."

2 of 228 comments (clear)

  1. Re:SAVING by skids · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I just prefer to drive home from work in daylght. So I'd rather have DST all the time than never.

  2. Re: SAVING by corychristison · · Score: 4, Interesting

    As someone even more North than you (Canadian Prairies), it doesnt make any sense... sun is still down when most people go to work, and sun goes back down again before most people are done work.

    Shifting it an hour really has no benefit when you only get 7 hours of daylight in the winter.

    In the Summer it's polar opposite. Sun comes up between 5-6 am, sets around 10pm.

    With that said, where I live, we don't have DST and I'm damn glad we don't.

    It's largely a regional thing, based on where you are geographically. This is why generalized discussions about DST don't make sense. Everyone lives in different area's both on the horizontal and vertical axis.

    In other words, your experience is not my experience. How about we quit arguing about it and get on with our lives?