I think your flippant response here robs us of a conversation as to why we do this — what larger purpose does it serve in the macro scale mentioned earlier. Is earth a set of short term optimized life leading to different eras or are humans the first sentient life that must take responsibility for it. If so how and with what goals. For our own preservation? To freeze all life as it is today?

No other species has had this great of an impact on that many species. If we were wise and thoughtful, collectively we could both advance ourselves and allow the diversity to continue. So it's a shame we aren't.

Humans are notoriously short sighted

Arguably cyanobacteria beat us to the punch a bit less than 2.5 billion years ago in the Great Oxidation Event, when they killed off much/most of the other life by producing a lot of oxygen:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event

The lifeforms they killed off were not very diverse, and not very interesting - mostly bacteria.

To learn and try to understand that is the goal of human life. How can we possible understand our planet if we destroy all of its resources, kill off its diversity of life before we have an inkling of the complexity of how it works?

We can continue to exist and learn without killing off the planet.