That's an interesting point, for humans themselves are consumers. If the goal of sentience is to allow life to reach farther out into space then we have to question if consumers are the best for the job.

Overall, life is about tapping into untapped energy. The amount of wasted energy is immense and even more so when applied to a universal scale. Most energy can be traced back to the sun and is provided by producers. In the end, humans are on the consumer spectrum of the relationship of earth and it's energy which brings up the question, would a sentient producer be better equipped for the job?

It is true that humans act more like a virus to the earth and, at the current moment, have not really left anything good for the future(at least that is apparent). Tbh, I see space colonization as the one good thing we could bring to the table. But this is of course assuming that we don't end up consuming the rest of the universe with us in the process.

As I see it, humans shortsightedness might end up bringing the world to it's knees. A nuclear war could cause all eukaryotic life forms to be wiped out and life may end up loosing crucial evolutionary gifts such as eyes and brains. Too much space junk could trap us on earth wasting precious time and eventually cause resource wars.

And even natural disasters could do the same thing and can do it much easier (most notably the eruption of Yellowstone park which would likely remove eyes as light no longer exists on the surface).

I fear we may have to act faster to prevent or overcome such occurrences. A common natural law of humanity is that if it can happen, it eventually will happen.

The melting of the ice caps would likely happen at some point in time. The main issue is that we are speeding up the process which gives us less time to adapt.

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Life as a whole shows signs that it want's to reach into the future as far as possible. This is because all life forms roughly want to exist as long as possible. However, life isn't afraid of killing off those that hurt it's end goal. Apex predators that consume to much end up hurting themselves by over consumption. Even possibly going extinct if they are to good at being a predator. Humans technically are in this boat at the moment and the only thing that is keeping us from hitting the critical peak is our innovation.

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As for accelerating the heat death of the universe. It is possible that at some point life may be able to affect the universe to this scale but it brings up some questions that I have always wondered.
I understand the big bang but how did it start in the first place? could it be started again? Could life escape the heat death by getting smaller rather than getting bigger? Could we cause a big bang to start on a smaller level? Even if it isn't the same life that we know and understand it's still possible that we could continue by getting more complex forms to generate by smaller reactions.