Would someone please explain to the Utah Legislature that you cannot legislate the length of daylight hours?
If we stick to daylight saving time all year, sunrise will be delayed to nearly 9 a.m. in December, and will come up later than 8 a.m. four months of the year. If we want to wake up and leave in the dark during the coldest months of the year, we could move to Canada.
Alternatively, if we stick to standard time, sunrise would be 4:55 a.m. in June: Great if you milk cows, but not if you go to bed after the evening news and want to sleep to a reasonable hour.
The real situation is that daylight lasts between 9 to 15 hours each year in Salt Lake City, which means sunrise and sunset naturally vary by three hours. Our current system enables us to minimize the shift in the morning while exaggerating the shift in the evening. Sunrise varies from 6 a.m. and 8 a.m. (two hours), transferring one hour of the variability into the evening so that sunset is between 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. (four hours). If you stick with the same clock all year long, the sunrise will vary so much that life will be uncomfortable, with an entirely new set of problems.
Imagine being on the same time as Chicago in the dark of December. People are leaving for work at the coldest part of the day in Chicago, but at least the sun is coming up. Meanwhile, in Salt Lake, we would be leaving at the same exact moment, but the sun takes another hour and 40 minutes to come up in Salt Lake City, ensuring we are all out and about at the coldest hours of the day in the dark all winter long.
Alan K. Jones, Millcreek