Daylight saving time: Why some don't want to change the clocks

(CBS News) Most of us will be moving our clocks ahead one hour this weekend, with daylight saving time going into effect.

For some, it's a minor annoyance. Others want to get rid of it altogether, even petitioning the White House.

There is no spring-forward in tropical Hawaii, nor in arid Arizona where the thought of scorching summer days ending at 9 p.m. got people hot and bothered. They also don't set clocks ahead in the Hopi Nation, in northeast Arizona, but they do in the Navajo Nation, which completely surrounds it. Call it a "daylight saving donut."

Michael Downing, a Tufts University lecturer, said daylight saving was originally meant to save electricity with lighting at homes.

"Here's the problem: in Detroit on Sunday, people are going to wake up, and the sunrise won't occur until 8 o'clock, and they're going to have to turn on lights," he said.

Downing, the author of "Spring Forward," says daylight saving time is a boon for retailers. Downing said, "If you give Americans daylight at the end of the work day, they're more apt to shop on the way home."

But they have less time to drink. In 1997, Ohio University students rioted after clocks were shifted ahead and bars were forced to close an hour early.

In Russia, daylight saving time pits President Vladimir Putin against his protege, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who abolished it in 2011.

At stake are lucrative primetime broadcasts of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Russia was first put on daylight saving time by Joseph Stalin in 1928. But, Downing explained, "When October came, the Russians forgot to fall back. It wasn't until 1985 that an AP reporter stumbled onto the fact that the clocks were all wrong in Russia."

Only time will tell when all of this confusion will end.

For Michelle Miller's full report, as seen on "CBS This Morning," watch the video above.