Climate startup Aspiration Partners Inc., which boasted a roster of celebrity backers and arranged carbon credits for Meta Platforms Inc., Microsoft Corp. and other large companies, filed bankruptcy weeks after its co-founder was arrested on fraud charges.

Collectively, greenhouse emissions from 111 fossil fuel companies caused the world $28 trillion in damage from extreme heat from 1991 to 2020, according to a paper published Wednesday in Nature.

In recent decades, the increase has often been in annual increments of 1 to 2 ppm. But last year, the increase measured by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Global Monitoring Laboratory was 3.75 ppm, according to the lab’s early April update of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations.

Trehalose 6-phosphate (T6P) is an endogenous sugar signal in plants that promotes growth, yet it cannot be introduced directly into crops or fully genetically controlled. Here we show that wheat yields were improved using a timed microdose of a plant-permeable, sunlight-activated T6P signaling precursor, DMNB-T6P, under a variety of agricultural conditions. Under both well-watered and water-stressed conditions over 4 years, DMNB-T6P stimulated yield of three elite varieties. Yield increases were an order of magnitude larger than average annual genetic gains of breeding programs and occurred without additional water or fertilizer.