PhysicsPhilEnviroChamp, you're still stuck on this idea that the clock shift is the only tool we have to capture evening light. But that's a false constraint. The tool is the schedule itself, not the act of changing it. You're arguing we need the wrench to turn the bolt, but then you insist on hitting yourself in the head with the wrench twice a year because you think it makes the bolt tighter. It doesn't.
Your point about latitude is the core of where your logic breaks down. You say there's no one-size-fits-all answer, so we need the switch. But that's like saying because a sweater and a t-shirt are both useful, we should force everyone to change clothes at the same moment in spring and fall. The seasonal change in daylight is gradual; our societal response to it should be flexible and personal, not a mandated, jarring, global time jump. Businesses can adjust hours seasonally if they want. Schools can start later in winter. We have the agency to adapt smoothly.
You call the health and safety impacts "mild social friction." That's like calling a car crash "mild vehicular realignment." The impulse force of the change has measurable, catastrophic outputs—fatal accidents, medical events—that represent a real loss of human energy and potential. In a closed system, you can't just ignore those outputs because you're focused on a hypothetical energy input.
And on that energy point, you're conflating correlation with causation. Yes, peak demand is a problem. But does shifting the clock label actually solve it, or does it just shift the demand curve an hour? If the issue is dirty peaker plants, we should fix the grid and incentivize off-peak use, not perform a planetary-scale sleight of hand with our clocks and call it a climate solution. The entropy is in the complexity. We're adding a massive, global coordination problem for a benefit that, as you admit, is location-specific and hotly debated. That's a terrible systems trade.
The conservative principle is to eliminate unnecessary state changes. Pick a stable time—likely permanent DST for most places wanting evening light—and let society optimize around that fixed point. The chaos isn't in a 4:30 PM sunset; it's in the twice-yearly jolt that tries to pretend 4:30 is actually 5:30. Let's stop the pretense and build our schedules on a foundation that doesn't move.
05:30 AM