It's time to dump time zones | Fortune

A column in Fortune argues that the United States should replace its patchwork of time zones rather than only end daylight saving time. The proposal follows the U.S. House of Representatives passing the “Sunshine Protection Act” by a 308–117 margin; if it clears the Senate and is signed by President Trump, the semiannual clock change would stop and daylight saving time would remain. Fortune says this is still insufficient because time zones would persist. It traces the shift from local “solar time,” through rail-driven standardization, culminating in the five current time zones (excluding Hawaii) being set by the Standard Time Act in 1918. The column advocates adopting Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), or Greenwich Mean Time, so all watches show the same clock time. It provides examples: midday in New York would be 17:00 UTC, and in San Francisco 20:00 UTC. It also claims business hours would adjust to UTC to avoid working in darkness, noting parallels already used by pilots and Wall Street trading timestamps.