The cost/benefit approach currently being utilized by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) needs to be abandoned in favor of the precautionary approach for environmental regulations. The burden of proof should be shifted to the polluters and those who damage public resources through overuse/poor management. We should reinstitute the polluter pays philosophy in order to promote the 4 P concept (polluter pays precautionary principle) advocated by Dr. Robert Costanza (Univ. Vermont's Gund Institute). We need to focus on conserving the natural capital and ecosystem services that support public resources (from fish to forests). This effort would include promotion of natural/social "resilience" and "sustainability" as outlined by the Resilience Alliance website. We need to shift to a new paradigm for managing public resources and combatting environmental pollution/degradation. We need to be proactive rather than reactive. We need to replace the ecological risk assessment paradigm with "vulnerability analysis" and scenario approaches that acknowledge the reality of a world dominated by complex dynamic systems. The recent financial collapse caused by falling housing prices and mortgage foreclosures is due in part to equilibrium models of financial derivatives market which gave a false sense of security ( a point recently made by Warrren Buffet). Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of dynamic complex system modelling would know that we can't predict the long term future impact of human activities on the environment with the use of equilbrium/steady state- based models. Complex dynamic system models predictions are very sense to the initial conditions which are poorly understood in many management/regulatory contexts. The other lesson that can be learned from this approach is that the pathway of environmental/financial collapse often differs radically from the recovery process because of "hysteresis" within the complex systems. Thus the recovery process reaches a new alternative state from that which existed prior to the perturbation. One needs to employ an adaptive management approach in which one takes an action; monitors the metrics for seeing whether the policy is working as proposed; and make mid-course changes if we are not moving towards the desired outcomes/goals. This approach is tied into the field of "ecological economics" which has been influenced by the work of Buzz Hollings (Univ. Florida), Herman Daly (Univ. Maryland), Charles Hall (SUNY- School of Forestry), Robert Costanza, etc. Traditional natural resources economic theory is responsible for much of our environmental damage that has occurred to environmental services and diminishment of natural capital/national wealth. Classical economic theory doesn't adequately incorporate the influence of non-market components (externalities) in the use of public resources and consequences of environmental pollution on the natural world/health of the less affluent members of our society. Thus we need to move towards a regulatory approach that considers the 4P concept, sustainability and environmental justice.