My youngest brother Ron and I were visiting on a call just before Christmas. I am the oldest of six boys. My parents had their hands full. Ron was the brother who picked up a hot charcoal when he was 2-years old, a story I told in a recent article. The lesson was to learn from your mistakes. Ron said, “You know there is another lesson from that incident. Do not trust your older brothers.” I was confused. Ron related a part of the hot coal story I was not aware of. Charcoals build up a layer of ash as they burn. They do not appear hot. To a 2-year old they appear soft and fluffy. “After Mom told me not to touch the charcoals because they are hot, David and Dana (older brothers) whispered in my ear. They are not hot. You can pick them up. They convinced me it would be fun to pick one up. I believed them. They lied to me.” Ron picked up the charcoal burning his hand and cried all the way home. I remember David and Dana complaining to Mom, “Can’t you shut him up.” Now I know the rest of the story.

As a child we quickly learned our brothers and others will play jokes on us and can’t always be trusted for truthful information. We were fortunate to have parents who loved us and wanted the best for us. We could trust them. There were things they didn’t completely understand as the world changed. They never knowingly lied to us or gave us bad information. Ron learned Mom cared about him. She would never give him information that would harm him. The lesson learned was you can trust Mom. You can’t always trust your brothers. Children need anchors in their lives. People like parents, teachers, and coaches who they can trust and depend on for honest information growing up. We see cases where these trusted individuals taking advantage of children. It can be devastating. Adults also need people and organizations they can trust for truthful information to make the best decisions possible.

We depend on our government to protect us. We may be able to protect our home from intruders. As individuals we cannot fully protect ourselves from terrorists or foreign nations like Russia and Vladimir Putin. We pay taxes so our federal government can build an army to secure our borders and protect us from attack by other nations. Our taxes also pay for police to protect our property and allow us to walk our streets safely.

When government does not do its job and allows criminals, drug dealers and terrorists to walk into our country through an open border terrible things happen We also expect government to do its part to keep our lights, heat, and air conditioning on. We can have a fireplace or put solar panels on or roof, in most cases this will not heat and cool our house 24/7/365. Outside energy sources like pipelines carrying natural gas or electricity from our electric utility supply the energy needed to keep us and our families comfortable and entertained. Government gets involved to make this happen.

Like my mother with Ron or our own parents, we depend on government to take care of us in situations bigger than we can handle. We expect people to be more important than politics. We expect government to make policies based on facts and sound engineering principles. We expect honesty in government. Today we have gang members, drug dealers and other criminals who crossed our border illegally free in our country. We had a government shutdown because politics were more important than “we the people..” We are close to power shortages especially during extreme weather events because our regional power grid, PJM, was forced to focus on carbon rather than electrical dependability, as we heard at the West Virginia Governor’s Energy Conference.

We will be hearing a lot more about power shortages in 2026 especially in weather extremes. PJM is working on short-term fixes to increase power supply. Solar can help on sunny days. Unfortunately, weather extremes are when we need power the most, like on cold snowy days when the sun isn’t shining and solar panels are covered with snow and they aren’t producing power.

With the warm weather after Christmas, we were able to get outside to our fire pit for a few evenings. We have some solar lights around our patio since I haven’t run electricity out there yet. Lynnda remarked our lights aren’t working. She answered her own question when she commented, “It is these short cloudy days.” I remarked, “Imagine if we were sunning our house on solar.”

People need food and shelter to survive. Both require energy. We need energy to survive. Sadly, government has made energy political. We can’t legislate the sun to shine 24/7 or that 2+2 will equal 5 in the USA. Science can change with new discoveries. Engineering principles are constant because they are math based. 2+2 will always be 4. We are looking at power shortages. It is time to take the politics out of energy and do whatever it takes to get new power online while we can. Power plants take years to build. At the WVMA meeting in December I asked a utility executive, “How long will it take to build a new natural gas power plant if we start today.” He said, “Planning, permitting and construction will take 5 years.” Coal and nuclear are longer. These are the current baseload power sources that are not weather dependent.

Unfortunately, we don’t always get what we want. We get what we vote for and allow our elected representatives to get away with. I trust engineers more than politicians. We need to make our feelings known to our representatives and how their decisions or lack of them affect us. People must come first. Ron learned to trust Mom rather than his brothers. All things are possible.

Greg Kozera, gkozera@shalecrescentusa.com is the Director of Marketing for Shale Crescent USA. He is a professional engineer with a Masters in Environmental Engineering and over 40 years of experience in the energy industry. Greg is a leadership expert, high school soccer coach, professional speaker, author of four books and many published articles.