Why do we still have daylight saving time?

Blame war, not farmers. Germany adopted clock-shifting in 1916 to save fuel for World War I and the US followed in 1918. The farmers-wanted-it story is exactly backward: agricultural groups hated DST, since cows and dew ignore clocks, and farm lobbying got the national version repealed after the war. Congress standardized the modern system in 1966 and stretched it in 2007, so we now spend nearly eight months on daylight time.

The original rationale has aged poorly: modern studies find energy savings near zero, sometimes negative once air conditioning enters the math, while the spring transition brings measurable spikes in heart attacks, crashes, and general misery.

So why does it persist? Because agreement ends at abolish the switching. Retail and recreation industries favor permanent daylight time; sleep scientists favor permanent standard time as better aligned with human biology. The Senate actually passed permanent DST in 2022, and the effort died in the House. The clocks keep changing while the argument does not.