We have to be a little careful of this kind of statement because the Second Law does have effects on Earth. It keeps us from ever making a certain class of perpetual motion machines, for instance.
The latter frustration led Maxwell to postulate a very hypothetical demon to thwart the second law and reset a heat engine to its initial condition for free. (It was eventually shown that even a hypothetical demon isn't enough unless it operates by pure and utter magic.) The second law operates here and everywhere, but it doesn't frustrate processes which operate in systems far from thermodynamic equilibrium.
Hence, "in this context"