Why is he so obsessed with progress he is willing to allow cities to exist but claim to be an for ecology?

wow, really gets the noggin' joggin'

infact AIDS is more valuable than human life.

Urban living is way more ecological than any other one that doesn't involve killing billions.
Ecology isn't "I love nature!", its building a sustainable society.

You literally cannot stop people from making cities

he says repeatedly that neither should be put before the other, as we need nature to survive, as does nature need us to fix the global ecological catastrophe we've created.

This tbh

Humanities desire for comfort trumps any deep ecologist argument

But cozy villages are most ecological than disgusting noisy polluted cities.

you can restructure society to make forming cities not advantageous as Bookchin claims its possible to restructure society for Communalism.

Essentially the deep ecologists have no way to prevent cities emerging, whereas social ecology can prevent markets and private ownership from emerging by presenting a better alternative. also genocide

Bookchin agrees with you. This is not a problem with cities, but with the social structure of urbanization via a system of exchange-values

I don't think there really is any good solution to the environment

Most likely environmental destruction will keep ongoing. Yes, there are a few places that have been abandoned that are reforesting. Other places seem destined to be destroyed.

I am studying ecology and conservation and becoming alienated from the study because so much of it revolves on either keeping the past or going even further back and recreating an even further past. I think there is only a future, and many species will not make it into that future.

Perhaps some species will recover and that is worthwhile. I have more hope in novel ecosystems that naturally emerge (but what a lot of conservationists despise and do not consider nature) from both native and non-native plants.

The whole nature conservation idolizes the past nature too much for me. As if nature is crafted perfectly and not more of a mixmash (ecological fitting might be more common as thought however co-evolution does surely happen).

Now when it comes to the environment and humans. We are still very much dependent on it, and I am unsure if that changes. I think that depending on how we do some of nature might be catching up with us.

I've heard a lot of alarming news about antibiotics but so far so good. But I can see weedy plants catching up with us.

You guys might be interested in ecomodernism. I agree with some of their stuff such as the need for nuclear power but otherwise they seem to be plain system justification.

My vision of nature is more akin to Fred Pearce's "The New Wild". I think we shouldn't hang on the past. While I don't want to lose to many nature it is fine to me if we lose a bit. Because eventually nature will have its time again. It might take millions of years, maybe less (current research seems to suggest evolution can go much faster as thought given the chance).

Unless we fuck up really bad but that doesn't seem the case and if we do we'll go first.

So in short:
1) I think we need to ditch the old nature.
2) I think we should keep on progressing, because there doesn't seem to be an alternative

I do have some trouble with intensive agriculture on the other hand it allows decoupling and more room for autonomous nature.

Having said all of this, I am not even sure if humans will be capable of continuing progress. We are running out of certain resources, climate change will shake things up and certain technologies seem potentially dangerous.

I think it will take a lot for human extinction but collapse of civilization does seem somewhat probable to me. But anarcho-primitivists cannot rejoice because it seems likely that IF humans survive they will recreate civilization.

Be careful user, don't cut yourself on all that edge.

...

Because living in an urban setting creates the conditions for civic, communal democracy without falling back on tribal patrimonial or familial systems of hierarchy and organization present in smaller, more rural societies.

The point of communalism is to bring people back into contact with nature and give them a stake in its preservation. By abolishing capitalism and the state and decentralizing power among confederated cities, you empower people to protect their surrounding environments.

There's a ton of anti-development, pro-preservation NIMBYism in every community I know. The problem is it either gets overruled by higher government powers or private capitalist firms, or drowned out by the concerns of the alienated masses who segregate themselves off in suburbs, commute long hours to work, and generally are minimally connected to their local environments. Remove these two factors and reduce the problem to individual urban communities doing what's best for them, and suddenly environmental protection becomes a solvable problem.

Because people in the cities have a smaller per-person footprint than in suburbia. Cities are the future, and idolizing rural life is reactionary.

Aren't cities a more efficient way for people to live and organize than whatever the alternative would be?

He was very critical of large cities. He aperiantly hated the smog filled megalopolis like New York where he grew up. I think he advocated much smaller and compact cities that would be built and organised in a sort of harmony with nature.

but cities destroy localism, sense of community, and are just less pleasant than villages

I live in a small fishing town and there is very little sense of community. I fucking love it when I go the the city nearest city and I walk around the centre and there are just so many people all talking and mingling, eating together and shit. Its not a large city but still. While at home every thing is just sort of dead except during weekend night where everyone is out drinking.
Im not saying that cities are always more alive then small towns or that small towns are always dead as fuck, just that cities dont always mean more isolation and alienation.

meant for

What ecologists don't seem to understand is that Humans are wiping the slate clean just like the meteors and climate change wiped out the dinosaurs, this is natural and a new biologically diversity will emerge from either the extinction of mankind or genetic engineering new ecosystems entirely

Rent parties and neighborhoods disprove this

How do cities destroy a sense of community?

there is too many people

Idk about that honestly. IMO cities broaden perception, give you a more accurate idea of how other people live, dont force you to associate with shitty destructive people, etc. I grew up in a big city so I'm biased but the idealization of small town life seems flawed

How does too many people destroy a sense of community? In big enough cities, neighborhoods/districts/burroughs develop their own inner community, too.

The cities must be annihilated.