In Three Minutes, John Oliver Perfectly Explains Why We Should Ban Daylight Saving Time

Impact

Year in and year out, people around the world complain about daylight saving time. Why do we have it? Does it even make any sense? We want our hour of sleep back!

With repeated calls to kill daylight saving, this year was no different. While the repetition may dilute the message, that doesn't make it wrong. That's what John Oliver and the Last Week Tonight team set out to prove in Sunday night's installment of "How Is This Still a Thing?"

In just over three minutes, Oliver's video made short work of the working knowledge of why it exists — "Of course daylight saving doesn't benefit farmers: Cows don't care what time it is, because they're cows" — and what effects it actually has on the population. Those effects are lost sleep, stress and car crashes, among other things. Those effects are not energy conservation or any of the other understood benefits. 

The video also zeroes in on who is to blame for daylight saving. It also reminds us that no matter why something exists, there's no reason to simply continue on with it simply because it exists. As local news hosts across the world will tell you, there's little reason for 70 countries to still be using it.

Last Week Tonight/YouTube

While the repeated echoes of hating daylight saving time might begin to sound like a broken record, it's a record worth giving a listen. The question shouldn't be "Why does everyone complain about daylight saving." It should be, as Last Week Tonight phrased it, "How is this still a thing?"