If there happen to be any other sentient species watching us, I can only assume they spend most of the time face-palming, head-shaking and eye-rolling.
We'd probably still be a dinosaur-populated planet if not for a random asteroid.
I'm personally not invested in the environment-preservation fight at all.
Life exists in this universe, it's a part it's nature and so is consciousness. Whether by design or by some random chance, it is self-evident that it exists. Not only that, you can find it adapted to the extremes of every environment it encounters.
Suffering is the engine of adaptation and everything we consider valuable has only come about through the immense suffering and sacrifice of those that have lived.
We, as conscious life, are the only known species which have the possibility to adapt to an environment outside of Earth. I believe, without any external spiritual input, that our responsibility is quite clear.
How much suffering is a function of the zero-sum game that is played in our (mostly) closed environment? Yes, expanding into space may increase the overall number of individuals suffering, but isn't it really suffering per capita that should be the measure?
Suffering isn't to be ignored and I believe seeking to reduce when possible is admirable and morally right... but to abdicate our responsibility to the process of life and allow it halt (which it will eventually on this planet)? Simply because some people feel bad about things sometimes? No, I'm not buying it for a second.
Or they see us as a natural phenomenon following similar patterns to other fledgling civilizations. We don't roll our eyes when a pathogen is so virulent it kills its host before it propagates.
I don't have proof of this, but I think most creatures have some amount of awareness, progressively decreasing as you descend the great chain of central nervous system complexity. Probably decreasing quickly at first, from humans to primates to regular mammals, and more slowly afterwards, until asymptotically vanishing into virtual nothingness as there's no complex nervous system to speak of anymore.
Perhaps we're at the bottom of the interval of what could be called truly self-aware consciousness, as opposed to, I don't know, maybe somnolent or lethargic or dimly awake consciousness. With that I would agree.
Which of course automatically raises the question: why should the ascending arc stop here? And what do the next levels look like? Probably impossible for us to imagine even in principle, but still.
In evolutionary terms we have literally only just managed to build a technological society. Therefore it stands to reason we only recently evolved sufficient intelligence to do so. Otherwise we'd have done it sooner. In the grand scheme of things we're on the very lowest bottom level of the sentience hierarchy.