Reality Proves Possibility- Humanity can do Better than this
Oct 14, 2026 · 37 min · 10 segments
What if the biggest barrier to sustainability is not technology, policy, or money—but the way we are trained to see the world? Paul Shrivastava argues that possibility is not separate from reality…
Paul ShrivastavaGuest
Michael PirsonHost
Yeah, so let me say with regard to institution building, both at a global level with Future Earth, which is a network of scientists, 50,000 scientists spread around the world focused on sustainability sciences broadly or environmental change broadly.
And then also being the chief sustainability officer, uh, of the Pennsylvania State University for five years, where I was responsible for incorporating sustainability into all the functions of a university.
Research, teaching, student life, operations, community engagement, et cetera.
In both those cases, my big lesson have been not so much about teaching students, but about co-learning with peers.
You know, a lot of people want to be sustainable, but they don't come with a mindset or the training or the understanding of how to do it.
So when I arrived at Penn State, for example, there are probably 50 people in the top management there, deans and vice presidents, et cetera, and I went around talking to them, asking them what did they-- I've been hired to do sustainability here at Penn State, and, uh, I would like to begin by asking them what their understanding of sustainability was.
And virtually everyone, including the climate scientists, world-famous climate scientists, when they looked at Penn State and said, "Oh, sustainability? We are an agricultural and technology university.
Sustainability means more f-" Greening and more forests and planting trees, and maybe recycling because- And I was shocked by this because I thought that at least the people who are studying environmental damages would think about a university sustainability in bigger, broader terms.
And it, it was just shocking to me that they had barely heard about sustainable development goals, and this was in 2017 when I arrived at Penn State.
But then we started to, uh, bring sustainability home to these top management folks by having one-on-one conversations.
And moving from personal sustainability behaviors of recycling or, or planting trees to institutional behavior.
Okay, you are the head of purch- You are the chief purchasing officer or you are the manager of our endowment.
What, what does sustainability mean for the fund? Not for you as a manager of the fund, but for the fund.
Multiple meetings, some benchmarking against what other institutions were doing in their purchasing departments or in their endowment departments or in their physical plant and operations.
Yeah, so let me say with regard to institution building, both at a global level with Future Earth, which is a network of scientists, 50,000 scientists spread around the world focused on sustainability sciences broadly or environmental change broadly.
And then also being the chief sustainability officer, uh, of the Pennsylvania State University for five years, where I was responsible for incorporating sustainability into all the functions of a university.
Research, teaching, student life, operations, community engagement, et cetera.
In both those cases, my big lesson have been not so much about teaching students, but about co-learning with peers.
You know, a lot of people want to be sustainable, but they don't come with a mindset or the training or the understanding of how to do it.
So when I arrived at Penn State, for example, there are probably 50 people in the top management there, deans and vice presidents, et cetera, and I went around talking to them, asking them what did they-- I've been hired to do sustainability here at Penn State, and, uh, I would like to begin by asking them what their understanding of sustainability was.
And virtually everyone, including the climate scientists, world-famous climate scientists, when they looked at Penn State and said, "Oh, sustainability? We are an agricultural and technology university.
Sustainability means more f-" Greening and more forests and planting trees, and maybe recycling because- And I was shocked by this because I thought that at least the people who are studying environmental damages would think about a university sustainability in bigger, broader terms.
And it, it was just shocking to me that they had barely heard about sustainable development goals, and this was in 2017 when I arrived at Penn State.
But then we started to, uh, bring sustainability home to these top management folks by having one-on-one conversations.
And moving from personal sustainability behaviors of recycling or, or planting trees to institutional behavior.
Okay, you are the head of purch- You are the chief purchasing officer or you are the manager of our endowment.
What, what does sustainability mean for the fund? Not for you as a manager of the fund, but for the fund.
Multiple meetings, some benchmarking against what other institutions were doing in their purchasing departments or in their endowment departments or in their physical plant and operations.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
