Most matter in the universe is dead. So even if we assume that we can't come up with anything interesting and worthy achieving right now we can still transform dead matter into thinking matter that might eventually come up with something.

At worst you would be wasting dead matter on a useless endeavor while ideally you discover more interesting things down the road. Seems like a decent tradeoff.

A species includes its individuals. If the species dies, all of the individuals are also dead.

We identify as a group - a tribe. In recent millenia, it's worked out well for individuals to identify with even larger groups. Today, it's rational to identify globally, for the benefits of trade, collaborative technological development and peace. There may well be some evolutionary pressure towards this. (Yes, there's reward for defection, but collaboration works even better).

Granted, "global" isn't the same as "species" - but in practice, and forever there is communication between members, they are identical (have the same referent).

It's pretty circular to give group-level reasons for why individuals should "identify globally."

We're biological life forms, it's literally our prime directive. Besides that though is there a rational reason to do anything? Ultimately the universe doesn't care so why bother?

If the species dies, all of my potential descendants die. I have genes that have evolved to prevent such an occurrence.

Genes don't evolve according to a purpose, they simply happened to last until the current point in time.

People have genes for all sorts of things, from over-eating to cheating on their spouse.

And?

Rational decision-making involves second guessing or even countering your genetic programming.

The "my genes made me do it" argument is no less flawed in a discussion about terraforming than one about what to order at McDonald's.