Daylight Saving Time Ends Sunday: Will We Ever Stop Changing Our Clocks?

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Daylight saving time ends at 2:00 am on Sunday, November 3rd, 2024, which means it’s time for Tennesseans to “fall back” by one hour.

Will Daylight Saving Time Become Permanent?

You may be asking yourself ‘I thought we were getting rid of daylight saving time’? Many legislators wanted to make daylight saving time permanent, meaning we would permanently ‘spring forward’ in March but not ‘fall back’ in the spring. Congress passed a bill, known as the Sunshine Protection Act of 2021, to make daylight saving time permanent but it was not taken up by the House.

The bill was re-introduced in March 2023 but it stalled with the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.

This isn’t the first time there has been widespread legislation to retain daylight saving time. To combat a national energy crisis, President Richard Nixon, signed a bill doing just that in late 1973. Although public opinion on the issue was initially high, that changed quickly and in October 1974, President Gerald Ford signed a bill returning the nation to standard time (Source).

How did daylight saving time come to be?

The U.S. first adopted daylight saving time in 1918 to save oil and electricity during World War I, reports nbcnews. But now, this isn’t the case. A 2011 study found that daylight saving actually cost Indiana households an extra $9 million per year in electricity bills because they spent more on heating and cooling, even though people used lights less, adds nbcnews.

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