Save world, hands off nuke buttons

It has become fashionable to poke fun at American President Donald Trump … and, to be honest, he doesn’t help matters by shooting himself in the foot on social media with his immoderate outbursts. At the same time, it is also easy to caricature North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as the latest, strange inheritor of a brutal family dynasty – never mind his funny haircut and outdated Mao suits.

Yet, what happens if this “odd couple” do manage to break the thick, almost 70-year-old, ice between their countries today? At their long-awaited summit in Singapore today, the men with their fingers on nuclear trigger buttons might just change the narrative we had become used to on North Korea. There was a belief by most in the West that the reclusive nation would become a major threat to world peace through its nuclear and missile-development programmes.

Kim has already, however, demonstrated he is willing to bring his country into the real world and, as a token of serious intent, has said he will stop the nuclear work and dismantle the programme’s facilities.

We need to realise that we are all neighbours on this fragile planet and the real war we should be fighting is to save our environment …