Believe It or Not: COVID-19 Environmental Effects Are More Negatives Than Positives

Abstract

In addition to altering drastically people's daily lives, COVID-19 has slowed down economic activities, imposed restrictions, and enforced lockdown, altogether causing significant effects on the environment. Studying the direction, magnitude, and durability of these effects carries a serious lesson for the whole world. Preliminarily evidence suggests that COVID-19 has temporarily improved air quality, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and noise pollution, yet, due to lock-down, the flourishing of delivery services has pulled up the single-use plastics, increased the usages of vehicles by a lower ratio of passengers/vehicle, and raised demand for energy. Using the approach of the Ambiental Kuznets curve, we investigate the impact of COVID-19 total cases on the monthly average of carbon monoxide emissions measured in micrograms per cubic across a sample of developed, heavy polluters, economies from 2014 to 2020. Driscoll-Kraay regressions confirm the COVID-19 long-run polluting impact by increasing monoxide emissions in countries of analysis.

Keywords: COVID-19, Environment, Monoxide emissions, Driscoll-Kraay regressions

JEL Classification: I15, Q53