> The point of this piece is not that living in Barcelona and commuting to London is sensible -- it's that the North London property market has gone totally batshit insane.

That's not the only point.

The other point is that flights are still much too cheap:

And that is because airline companies/consumers are still allowed to externalize the insane environmental costs. Meaning: we are allowed to pollute, without having to pay for it. That means, a) we promote pollution (the externalized costs) and b) these costs are paid for by the entire world population (1st, 2nd and 3rd world, even if the latter have never ever polluted in the slightest way).