Brazil eliminated daylight saving time. It’s having second thoughts.
For five years, Brazilians have lived under the sort of temporal tranquility that many Americans have long coveted. No clock changes, no scheduling confusions — the much-maligned daylight saving time banished by presidential decree.
“Daylight saving time, never again!” once said former President Jair Bolsonaro, who signed the order.
Turns out the practice isn’t so easily defeated.
Following several energy emergencies, and with the prospect of more to come as the effects of climate change intensify, the vanquished daylight-saving time is suddenly looking a whole lot better than it once did to some in the Brazilian government.
Authorities nearly mandated the return of daylight saving — a portion of the calendar when clocks are turned forward to maximize seasonal daylight — late last year to conserve energy amid a historic drought that had threatened hydroelectric power generation and drove up light bills. The government is already laying the political groundwork to restore it as soon as this year.
“I want to highlight my defense of daylight-saving time as policy for the country,” Alexandre Silveira, Brazil’s mining and energy minister, said in October.
People and governments all over the world are having the same debate, often coming to conflicting conclusions.
Countries including Azerbaijan, Mexico and Samoa have done away with daylight saving time. Meanwhile, Jordan, Namibia and have gone the opposite direction, opting for permanent daylight-saving time. And Russia, discovering there’s no way to tell time that pleases everyone, first tried permanent daylight-saving time, then scuttled it.
The United States, too, has been ensnared by a years-long melodrama over the question. A majority of Americans want a change in timekeeping, a Monmouth University poll found in 2022, but they don’t agree on what it should be. A plurality want permanent daylight saving, while 13 percent prefer perpetual “standard time,” when the clocks are turned back.
President-elect Donald Trump appears as conflicted as America on the issue.
“Making Daylight Saving Time permanent is O.K. with me!” he tweeted in 2019.
“Eliminate Daylight Saving Time,” he said in 2024
After Brazil eliminated daylight saving in 2019, life, if not time, went on mostly unchanged. But it was also stranger.
In the heavily populated southeast, the sky begins to brighten at the unconscionable hour of 4:30 a.m. during the summer, and by 8 a.m., it feels like high noon. On Rio de Janeiro’s beaches, it never seems too early to worry about getting sunburned.
People, as is their wont, have taken to social media to complain.
“It’s already clear out at 5:19 in the morning,” one person said. “I miss daylight saving time.”
“A longing named daylight saving time,” another said.
“For the love of God, not even 8 a.m., and there’s a solzão na minha cara,” a big sun in my face, a third complained.
But as the years have gone by, an increasing number of Brazilians began to feel differently. Some grew to prefer life without daylight saving, particularly those who commute long distances and are no longer forced to leave their houses in pitch blackness. Roughly one-quarter of Brazilians, according to a study published in the Annals of Human Biology, reported feeling discomforted throughout the duration of daylight-saving time. Polls showed it ultimately lost majority support.
“It’s great for everyone,” Bolsonaro rejoiced in late 2022. “Society has adapted to the end of daylight-saving time, which messed with the majority of the Brazilian population.”
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