As I cruised west on I-20 toward the state’s capital city Wednesday, my car’s thermostat measured the outside temperature at 103 degrees - and this was without factoring in the heat index, which would have raised it to about 109.

The last time I was this hot was four years ago, when my son and I drove across the Mojave Desert in July en route to his new home in California. At a rest stop midway, I spotted a proud flowering shrub, walked over and congratulated it.

Back in the car with Leo, a pit/border collie hybrid panting lovingly down our necks, we gazed at the gas gauge’s remaining miles and compared the figure with the miles to our destination - a much larger number. Then I estimated how much water we had left.

Suddenly, my son and I both screamed. A road sign suggesting a town - Ludlow - had materialized through the waves of heat. Another sign read, “Next Services 27 Miles.” Searching the horizon, we saw what looked like a low building with a sign perched high above bearing the number 76 encircled in orange. Gas!

We took the exit and were ecstatic to find a pump in front of a shuttered store. Just one, but it worked. Ludlow, population 9, is in California and was once an important water stop for the railroad along Route 66. Otherwise, it seems to be a place where a person goes to be forgotten by the other 8. Two other snapshots nearby: a tractor-trailer parked on a hill with “TRUMP” painted on its side; a tiny bungalow situated in the desert’s middle distance with a truck parked out front.

The heat let up by about 45 degrees when we reached Ventura on the coast, and we thought we’d landed in heaven. I’ve known few happier moments, which is testament to the importance of one’s environs to well-being.

Alas, the heat in South Carolina shows no sign of relenting, even if the dome relocates. Nearly everyone thinks it’s becoming hotter each year, and science seems to bear this out. The number and intensity of heat waves are increasing, as are the frequency and severity of hurricanes. As long as we do nothing to curtail greenhouse-gas emissions, temperatures are projected to rise more - though South Carolina is a regional leader in trying to mitigate climate change.

Other states, notably Washington, Oregon, California, Vermont, Massachusetts and Maryland, are ahead of the rest in taking steps to protect the environment. These exceptions notwithstanding, my drive to Columbia convinced me that Homo sapiens is the stupidest species on the planet. This insight isn’t brand-new, but it has been burnished by the recent proliferation of hideously designed tract housing developments across the country. Deserts by any other measure.

The affordable-housing shortage of the past several years has given rise to fast-and-cheap development that no one seems to want but that developers and officialdom justify as necessary. Sure, we need more houses with a patch of grass for first-time home buyers, preferably near workplaces and schools. But why not a few trees, too?

Bulldozing old-growth forests to make way for chockablock housing a stone’s throw from the interstate is illogical, if not counterintuitive. We know that trees improve air and water quality and cool the air and mitigate climate change. We know they absorb carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides and release oxygen, improving air quality. Trees conserve water by absorbing stormwater runoff, and they reduce erosion by stabilizing soil.

Most anyone prefers a yard with trees and the shade they provide, but developers claim critical cost savings are passed on to buyers. This might be so, but why not raise standards that ultimately benefit those buyers, as well as their communities? How does anyone grow up properly without a tree to climb, there to dream of adventure and enjoy a moment of solitude?

The same lack of imagination governs the paved parking lots that resemble asphalt deserts. Try finding a shade tree to park under next time you’re at Walmart or Costco. The occasional saplings that commercial developers typically drive into inhospitable squares of dirt will be a long time becoming shade trees. With all our smarts and technology, we can’t come up with a better way to provide parking than impermeable asphalt?

I’ve wandered a bit from Ludlow here, but the theme is the same. We need to adapt to hotter times, not by becoming accustomed to the heat but by changing the way we build and preserving our natural resources. As someone who grew up in Florida before schools and most homes were air-conditioned, I’m as heat-tolerant as anyone. But I can assure you that the Florida heat and humidity from decades ago can’t compare to what so many Americans have been experiencing during the past week’s heat wave. Our desert-like heat these days should motivate us to start acting smarter, or it’s only going to get worse.

Kathleen Parker is a Washington Post columnist.