It's not exactly the stuff of YouTube clips or snappy one-liners, but a major battle is being waged over the future of the commonwealth. The subject is power.

The State Corporation Commission is conducting a series of hearings about a power line Dominion proposes to string from western Pennsylvania to a substation in Loudoun. Dominion says the line would play a crucial role in avoiding future blackouts by meeting some of the voracious demand for juice in Northern Virginia. Opponents, including some very rich people with a lot of picturesque farmland, say the line simply isn't necessary. (The Piedmont Environmental Council, for instance, recently was the beneficiary of a fundraiser held by actor Robert Duvall on his 360-acre farm in Fauquier.)

The opponents might come across as more credible if some of them were not reflexively opposed to seemingly everything, from the Disney theme park once proposed for Prince William to even a mere study of uranium mining in Pittsylvania. (Not to mention a power plant in Wise, or expansion of the North Anna nuclear reactor, or anything else anyone might consider.)

Virginia's population is expected to grow by 3 million residents in the next couple of decades; a good chunk of that growth will occur in Northern Virginia. Many of those residents will want energy-intensive consumer goods -- from plasma TVs to plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, which offset tailpipe emissions by drawing energy from power plants. Conservation and renewable resources can mitigate some of the demand, but they cannot begin to balance the equation. The SCC has to -- and unlike the state's more reactionary elements, it has to look for a solution in the real world.