Norway’s capital, Oslo, has announced it will eliminate conventional automobiles from its city center by 2019, replacing them with electric cars — and thus slash its greenhouse gas emissions 50 percent by 2020.

This is sensational news for Oslo. But it may not be the right strategy for other cities intent on becoming carbon neutral, at least not yet. There are many other ways cities can reduce carbon emissions and air pollution in the near term: by transforming traffic-choked streets into integrated networks for bicycles, e-bikes, public transportation and walking.

Overall, Europe’s urban transportation system is nothing to crow about. But there are affordable, visionary plans to change that by 2030. Worldwide, cities are responsible for 70 percent of carbon dioxide emissions, and transportation is responsible for a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions. The battle against climate change must begin at street level.

The imperative to lower emissions in the transportation sector has never been more urgent, especially with world leaders meeting on Nov. 30 at the climate summit in Paris to devise new greenhouse gas targets. At present, Europe isn’t on track to meet its 2030 goal to cut carbon emissions by 40 percent — and transportation is an obvious culprit. In Europe, greenhouse gas emissions by fossil-fuel-powered vehicles, air travel and shipping have risen 27 percent since 1990, even as other sectors have reduced emissions.

It is scandalous that countries such as Germany don’t even have emissions reduction targets for their transport sectors. On the contrary, the automobile and aviation industries are coddled like spoiled children, a fact that this year’s Volkswagen debacle underscored. It wasn’t a coincidence that the German carmaker’s cheating on the emission levels of its diesels — which emit more carbon than gas-powered cars — was uncovered in the United States and not in Europe. Germany’s special treatment of its auto industry also obstructs efforts to cut air and noise pollution. More than 80 percent of Europeans today live in cities with prohibited levels of smog.

The good news is that recent advances in electromobility — spurred by the U.S. automaker Tesla — have put more e-vehicles on the road and cleared the way for a revolution in plug-in, battery-powered vehicles. European automakers have rushed to drop clunky hybrids in favor of models along the lines of the Tesla S, the first plug-in to have a range of over 200 miles and quick-charging batteries. Oslo is the world leader in e-mobility, with much of its street traffic already electric.

Norway is also exceptional in that it generates about 98 percent of its electricity from renewables, mostly hydropower from its abundant mountain lakes and rivers. This means that electric vehicles plugged into charging stations are being juiced up with zero-emission energy. This is the only way that e-mobility makes sense: when the electricity is green and not generated by coal or other fossil fuels. In many countries, the power supplies are so dirty that it makes more sense to drive a high-efficiency conventional vehicle than an e-car.