Rob writes:
The only thing keeping entropy at bay on earth is intelligence.
Life is a net entropy producer. Life just positions itself between the flow of energy from a high quality to a low quality and makes something ordered and useful in between.
Consider the grading of beach sand. Wave action will sort out the different size grains - which is an increase of order or decrease in entropy. This grading is not a violation of the 2nd law, nor is it "keeping entropy at bay", but just an intermediate result of energy dissipation.