Happy New Year to all my fellow contributors to the Guardian Letters Page - even Michael McGough and Will Podmore. It surely must be better than 2020, but only if we all do our bit to make it so.

On January 22 the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) will come into force, only 75 years after the first resolution of the newly founded UN General Assembly called for a total ban on these megadeath machines. 75 years in which the threat of a nuclear holocaust has hung over our heads, and which has been avoided more by luck than by judgement. Of course there is still a long, long way to go to get it implemented in the face of the powerful vested interests in the nine nuclear weapon states, but the treaty is a new tool in the hands of global civil society that has got it to this stage.

As we say a not fond farewell to 2020, the outstanding lesson must be a recognition of our common humanity, of emphasis on human security rather than military security, and on cooperation at all levels to defeat the real existential threats of climate change, pandemics etc, which do not recognise state borders.

Frank Jackson,

Kingsmoor Road, Harlow