[christophilus]

There are plenty of northern climate countries that get by just fine without DST. Also, if it’s genuinely a problem in a specific location for some reason, that specific location can just say, “Let’s all start work at 9 rather than 8 for the winter months” rather than impose an absolutely absurd song and dance on the entire time zone.

[pmontra]

Northern countries have a lot of light in summer and a lot of darkness in winter anyway. I saw the Sun setting at 23:00 in Iceland at the end of June and rising at 02:00 and pitch black in Denmark at 15:30 in December. What can DST change there?

On the other side, equatorial countries have about the same sunset and dawn all year long. Again, DST is useless.

Where DST is useful is in a place like the one I'm living at, at 45 degrees North. I'd go with permanent DST plus an extra DST in summer. Basically it's what Spain have been doing for almost a century.

It's cloudy and still reasonably bright outside here. It will be dark past 22:00. I'd take an extra hour of light in the evening and darkness until 6:00 in the morning. It matches the time people goes to sleep and wake up here.

[mizzao]

Or we can just start school later because kids no longer need to leave at 2:30 to go help on the farm.

[matthewowen]

The majority of the US population lives at latitudes that would be affected by the “sun rises after 8am in winter” problem.

As I said before, changing the clocks is a much more efficient approach than getting every school and workplace (etc) to change their hours.

It’s not true IMO that “plenty” of northern countries do without it. Russia doesn’t (since 2014) but their time zones are a mess anyway. Iceland doesn’t. Otherwise pretty much every European country does.

[christophilus]

Hm. A quick search suggests that 70 countries out of 195 have daylight savings time, with a fair number of those considering abolishing it. Most of those are in Europe. 73 countries have abolished DST, and 106 have never had it in the first place.

Not 100% sure on those stats. They come from AI, and I only spot-checked it. But yeah. Most northern climate countries do currently have DST.