Brazil eliminated daylight saving time. It’s having second thoughts.

RIO DE JANEIRO - 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 Turkey 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.”

“The change is here for good,” the former president pledged.

But the effects of climate change could undo that plan.

Latin America’s largest country is a global leader in green energy. An astounding 93 percent of its electricity comes from renewable sources, according to Brazil’s Electric Energy Commercialization Chamber, the majority of which is hydropower. This strength, however, has also left it vulnerable to global warming. As temperatures have warmed and punishing droughts have grown more frequent, the country’s water reserves have dropped precariously low at times, jeopardizing its primary source of energy.

In 2021, an extended drought depleted the country’s water stores, driving up light bills by an estimated 20 percent, according to the National Chamber of Electric Energy. Then came last year’s drought, the worst in 70 years, and government officials started to look more seriously at daylight saving. The National Operator of the Electric System released a report in September recommending a return to the practice, saying that it would reduce energy consumption by a critical 3 percent and save tens of millions of dollars.

Silveira, the energy minister, said that month that the decision to eliminate daylight saving had been extravagance Brazil could scarcely afford.

“It was massively irresponsible, without any basis in science,” the energy official said. “We’re living in a period of denial in Brazil in all aspects.”

José Sidnei Colombo Martini, an electrical engineer at the University of São Paulo, told The Washington Post that decision to end daylight saving amounted to a “national bet on whether it is going to rain.”

And the bet is expected to become increasingly risky as the years pass.

“Brazil has always had a massive amount of available water compared to other countries - storing 12 percent of the planet’s surface - but this is being altered,” said Suely Araújo, public policy coordinator at the Climate Observatory. Estimates show “we could have a 40 percent reduction in our water availability in Brazil’s principal hydro regions by 2040.”

“Brazil has entered a new reality,” she said.

On a sunny afternoon in the Rio de Janeiro beachside neighborhood of Ipanema, people were trying to acquaint themselves with that new reality, in which climate change has grown into such a force that it could even dictate how the country sets its clock.

Ernnan Bita, 36, said he would welcome the return of daylight saving. He said he had spent the past five years missing that extra bit of sunlight at the end of the day, that “sensation that you could do anything” when work was done. “Unfortunately, it didn’t come back this year, but I hope it will next year.”

Nearby, Bruna Mendonça, 37, a nanny minding her ward, was shaking her head.

“Thank God it didn’t come back,” she said. “I have to leave for work at 5 a.m. Imagine coming out and waiting at the bus stop without any light. Brazil is dangerous.”

Claudinho Oliveira, a 50-year-old DJ selling vinyl records in a green tank top, was more circumspective. He said the question of daylight saving time was bigger than any one person. It was about the future of the planet. Every bit of energy needed to be conserved, if possible. He didn’t think it was that big of an ask to change his clock twice a year.

“Anything we can do to help the planet is a huge accomplishment,” he said.

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Marina Dias in Brasília contributed to this report.