At the height of the financial crisis in 2008, Asians were urged by Western politicians and economists to consume more to help rebalance the global economy. At the same time, during the runup to the climate talks in Copenhagen, Asians, especially the Chinese, were scolded that they had to be responsible global citizens and reduce carbon emissions.
Few global leaders and commentators dared connect the dots and openly acknowledge that asking Asians to reduce emissions while asking them to consume more simply did not add up.
Now try imagining a world with three Americas. Difficult? But that's where economists say we're heading.
Within two decades at most, China will overtake the US and become the world's biggest economy. Within another 20 years, by 2050, India will be as big.
And what will drive this? Human aspiration, apparently - aided by free markets, technology and finance. As the cheerleader of globalization, Thomas Friedman has written: "World population is projected to rise from 6.7 billion to 9 billion between now and 2050, and more and more of those people will want to live like Americans."
This is unthinkable. If the United States is joined by two more economic masses as big - or bigger, as on current trends the American economy will also have trebled in size by mid-century - all aspiring to live like Americans, our planet's resources will be stressed beyond imagination.
Wherever we look - be it carbon emissions, oil and gas, food shortages, water, rare earths, fisheries or forests - there just isn't enough for the world to soak up another two consumption-driven Americas.
To stop heading down this road, Asian governments must immediately recognize that a bleak future lies ahead if Asians attempt to live out an aspiration to consume like Americans. The current debt crisis in the US, ultimately fueled by over-consumption, has even led China's media to lecture the Americans that it's "time to revisit the time-tested commonsense that one should live within one's means."
Above all, Asia must reject the blinkered views of those who urge Asians to consume relentlessly - be they Western economists and leaders who want the region to become a "motor of growth" or Asian governments convinced that ever-expanding economies are what their populations need.
