Setting $GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS is causing authentication issue

[Will]

• Operating System version: macOS 12.4
• Firebase SDK version: firebase cli 12.5.2
• Firebase Product: admin 11.10.1
• Node.js version: v18.16.0
• NPM version: 9.5.1

Steps to reproduce:

When pointing $GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS to a JSON key and running firebase emulators:start --only functions, the console will confirm the key is recognized

functions: Your GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS environment variable points to 
<absolute-path-the-key-file>.json. Non-emulated services will access production using these credentials. Be careful!

but the firebase-admin module will throw error

FirebaseAppError: Credential implementation provided to initializeApp() via the "credential" property failed to fetch a valid Google OAuth2 access token with the following error: "Error fetching access token: Error while making request: getaddrinfo ENOTFOUND metadata.google.internal. Error code: ENOTFOUND".
...
errorInfo: {
    code: 'app/invalid-credential',
    message: 'Credential implementation provided to initializeApp() via the "credential" property failed to fetch a valid Google OAuth2 access token with the following error: "Error fetching access token: Error while making request: getaddrinfo ENOTFOUND metadata.google.internal. Error code: ENOTFOUND".'
  },

When passing in the same key file directly when initializing firebase-admin, no such error is produced.

Relevant Code:

initialization that WILL cause the error (with $GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS set to the path to the key JSON file)

admin.initializeApp();

// or
admin.initializeApp({
  credential: admin.credential.applicationDefault(),
});

initialization that will NOT cause the error:

const serviceKey = require("path-to-the-key.json");

admin.initializeApp({
    credential: admin.credential.cert(payload)
});

code snipet to trigger the error

async function test() {
    const EMAIL = <redacted@redacted>;
    const user = await admin.auth().getUserByEmail(EMAIL);
}

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