Look back lest you fail to mark the path ahead.

Societal Impact Statement: The need for immediate action to avoid further climate change and biodiversity loss is upon us. Plant scientists have the tools to initiate the first steps of this action, but we face challenges in ensuring that our message is transferred clearly and concisely to non‐scientists. We must ensure that our research is rooted in reality, with reference to our current situation. Summary The devastating impacts of historical changes in atmospheric conditions demonstrate to scientists how precarious our current situation is, underscoring the need for immediate action to prevent further climate change. Humans are inherently adaptable creatures however, and we have so far managed to alter the planet to meet our own needs, cleverly exceeding natural limits and ignoring future consequences. We act as fugitive species, moving on to new resources rather than preventing their exhaustion, and attempting to treat the symptoms rather than the cause of ecological problems. To counteract this natural apathy in the face of relatively slow‐burning but devastating issues such as climate change and biodiversity loss, we as scientists must highlight dramatic current issues, and put future problems in a contemporary context to demonstrate the urgency of these problems to non‐scientists. Here, I discuss how we must make our arguments with reference to current reality, clearly, and unequivocally explaining the implications of our research, and proposing technological and ecological approaches to deal with the root cause of the issues we face. The need for immediate action to avoid further climate change and biodiversity loss is upon us. Plant scientists have the tools to initiate the first steps of this action, but we face challenges in ensuring that our message is transferred clearly and concisely to non‐scientists. We must ensure that our research is rooted in reality, with reference to our current situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]