In "By The Book", Charles Gannon - with RFC's sign-off and agreement - writes about a future where neo-luddites and radical-greens control Earth, and space exploration (and further technological advancement) is largely prevented by law.
Interestingly enough, NASA was the recent ricipient of a paper from its Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Working Group portending the darkness found in "By The Book." For your consideration, I quote below some snippets from the paper sent to NASA:
“Aesthetics should also be considered. If Moon mining is to be an extensive enterprise as planned, these changes will be visible from Earth,” they claim, “fundamentally changing one of the few communal human experiences of gazing at the Moon. In addition, the Moon and other planetary bodies are sacred to some cultures. Is it possible for those beliefs to be respected if we engage in resource utilization on those worlds?”
“Even if there is no extant microbial life on Mars or beyond, we must consider the impacts of our actions on geological timescales,” they say. “A human presence on an astrobiologically significant world could disrupt evolutionary processes already in place. What moral obligation do we have towards potential future life that our presence on Mars could impact, or to hybrid forms of life that our presence could potentially create? These questions must be addressed by planetary protection policy.”
“All of humanity is a stakeholder in how we, the planetary science and astrobiology community, engage with other worlds,” they say. “Violent colonial practices and structures — genocide, land appropriation, resource extraction, environmental devastation, and more — have governed exploration on Earth, and if not actively dismantled, will define the methodologies and mindsets we carry forward into space exploration. . . . It is critical that ethics and anticolonial practices are a central consideration of planetary protection. We must actively work to prevent capitalist extraction on other worlds, respect and preserve their environmental systems, and acknowledge the sovereignty and interconnectivity of all life.”
I don't know about you, but to me it seems that RFC (and Mr. Gannon) nailed it completely.
In case you want to read it in full: https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2010/2010.08344.pdf
*Note, I posted this here because it aligns almost perfectly (except being early by about 100 years of advancement) to the short story and Honorverse timeline.
