earticle

영어

Climate change is a phenomenon that occurs all around the world, it brings political, economic, and social issues over environmental issues. The main cause of climate change is the increase of CO₂emissions and because of it the number of extreme weather and economic damage is increasing rapidly. The proportion of urban population is about 50%, but they consume approximately 2/3 of the total energy consumption. So some argue that urbanization accelerates environmental pollution. In contrast, there is an another opinion that urbanization may create environmental benefits. In this study we conduct empirical analysis using STIRPAT model to find factors that affecting CO₂emissions and trying to reveal the relationship between urbanization and CO₂emissions. Our panel consists of 107 countries and spans the period between 1980 and 2008. We employ a panel fixed- effects by using STATA 12.0 program. Our main results show a non-linear relationship between urbanization and CO₂emissions. The impact of urbanization on CO₂emissions is positive in the early and middle stages of urbanization, but in the high level of urbanization it tends to decrease CO₂emissions.