But we can't just wait for innovation. Just like the Manhattan or Apollo Projects, it takes focus and dedicated resources to make it happen.

That's why today I'll be introducing legislation for a strategic energy fund. We need a serious commitment from government to prioritize advanced energy and a commitment from our oil companies to reinvest their unanticipated profits into our shared energy future.

I want the oil companies to be part of the solution. Last year the top six oil companies had combined profits of $113 billion; more than the annual income of 170 countries.

Now, ExxonMobil had, you know, the highest profits in corporate history. Yet when CEO Lee Raymond was asked about how much his company had invested in alternative energy over the last decade, his reply was, and I quote, "a negligible amount."

Well, that's inexcusable. You know, the oil industry is making $300 million a day, not because they planned on it, not because of great managerial expertise, but because of escalating world demand and therefore increasing prices for this commodity that they didn't create in the first place.

I think it's time that we made sure they put a fair share of their profits toward a sound energy future.

Last month I joined with colleagues in writing the president to ask him to support Senator Cantwell's legislation to make price-gouging a federal crime in our oil and gasoline markets. Now, we still haven't heard back. But I want to reiterate that call today.

But we can do better than that. And here's how.

We need to reform our energy taxes so that large oil companies who reap huge benefits from unexpectedly high energy prices over the next two years will be required to pay a portion of their profits into the strategic energy fund.

Basically, if you take an average of their profits from 2000 to 2004, you add a 10 percent figure on top of that, then you can get to a point where those profits for just two years would be invested in the strategic energy fund.

Now, the oil companies would have the option: They wouldn't have to invest if they did this themselves, if they began making investments in biofuels, in other forms of renewable energy, in new, cleaner refining capacity, solar, wind. If they did it themselves, then they wouldn't have to pay into the fund.

And we ought to repeal the tax breaks that even the oil companies have told us they don't need and put that money into the fund as well.

With prices, profits and with these tax breaks in the fund, you could raise about $50 billion: more than enough to begin the energy revolution that we need.