Greenland has just changed its clocks for the last time. Having just put its clocks forward one hour last weekend, instead of going back to its winter time this October, it will remain in a perennial Daylight Saving Time, permanently changing its time zone.
After consultation with the people of Greenland – an autonomous territory that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark – the government voted to leave their clocks untouched come fall. The country will instead remain three hours behind Copenhagen and Central European Time, and three hours ahead of Eastern Time. In winter, this will mean less light in the mornings and more in the afternoons.
“It is a historic day for Greenland," Prime Minister Múte Bourup Egede said, Sermitsiaq reports. "The change to the standard time zone for Greenland will only be felt at the end of October, when we normally set the clock back 1 hour. But we will not do that this year.”
Switching permanently to Daylight Saving Time was also voted in by the United States Senate in 2022 but the vote failed in the House of Representatives. Only a small number of countries have Daylight Saving Time, and in some of those, only some states do. Most of these countries are in the Global North, including Europe and North America, a few in the Middle East, and part of Australia and South America (during the Southern Hemisphere summer).
Lebanon has also found itself in a curious situation involving time zones. Currently, it has two simultaneously – not something it usually has. For the last few days, the government has been at odds with Christian religious authorities. The government had decided to postpone Daylight Saving Time until April 21, a date close to the end of Ramadan, supporting the Muslim citizens taking part in it by making sunset an hour earlier.
But the influential Maronite church, which represents the largest Christian institution in the Middle Eastern country, objected saying they were not consulted and that the move would create chaos. So they told people to move their clocks. Since clocks in Lebanon don’t change automatically (the government expects people to change the time themselves), this indeed created chaos with airports, transport, and businesses all affected.
The Lebanese government has now announced that the clock will change tonight, Wednesday, March 29.
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