The Impact of Globalization on CO₂ Emissions in Malaysia

This study investigates the impact of globalization, coal consumption, and economic growth on CO₂ emissions in Malaysia by applying the Kuznets Environmental Curve model. The study employed the Autoregressive Distributed Lag modeling technique on time series data over the period of 1970-2018 to determine the short and long-run relationship between CO₂ emissions and a number of variables, including globalization, coal consumption, and economic growth. The results show that globalization increase CO₂ emissions in both the short and long run in Malaysia. Furthermore, the results reveal that economic growth and coal consumption degrade the environmental quality by accelerating the CO₂ emissions in the short-run and long run. As a result, the findings validate the Kuznets Environmental Curve hypothesis of an inverted U-shaped relationship between economic growth and CO₂ emissions in the long run for Malaysia. The findings of this study suggest that higher globalization levels and usage of coal consumption degrade the environmental quality in Malaysia. The findings also indicate the effect of economic growth on environmental degradation is positive at the initial stage but improves after the economy achieves a threshold level of income per capita in the economic development process with an inverted U-shaped pattern in the long run.