Just FYI, I interpret that question very differently than your original.

Why don't you start with a simpler example, like a thermostat? Would you not call that an optimization process, minimizing the difference between observed and desired temperature?

Most of your rejections of suggestions in this thread would also reject the thermostat. An ideal thermostat keeps the temperature steady. Its utility function never improves, let alone monotonically. A real thermostat is even worse, continually taking random steps back. In extreme weather, it runs continually, but never gets anywhere near goal. It only optimizes within its ability. Similarly, evolution does not expand life without bound, because it has reached its limit of its ability to exploit the planet. This limit is subject to the fluctuations of climate. But the main limit on evolution is that it is competing with itself. Eliezer suggests that it is better to make it plural, "because fox evolution works at cross-purposes to rabbit evolution." I think most teleological errors about evolution are addressed by making it plural.

Also, thermostats occasionally commit suicide by burning down the building and losing control of future temperature. (PS - I think the best example of evolutionary suicide are genes that hijack meiosis to force their propagation, doubling their fitness in the short term. I've been told that ones that are sex-linked have been observed to very quickly wipe out the population, but I can't find a source. Added: the phase is "meiotic drive," though I still don't have an example leading to extinction.)

Inclusive reproductive fitness.