From getting started on, it is critical to pick your battles carefully. It helps if you are not the champion for every cause, but are known as the champion of a few causes. Do not be weird in too many ways at the same time. Be open to learning from the conventional professors and adapting what you learn to a sustainable research agenda. Often you will be chosen for your position in part by pressure from the higher administration who actually want the system to change.
Resistance probably comes from the more comfortable middle and higher ranks of the professoriate.
There are a variety of strategies for forming a community with them that can build mutual respect, and perhaps even eventually, allow them to consider your interests in sustainability less weird. Sharing conversations that show you are global also help. But very often people who are interested in issues of sustainability don t have the same interests, habits, or appearances that those who have been firmly embedded in a conventional institution share. People of color and women are automatically labeled even if they may wear cowboy boots or try to talk football. That labeling difference means that behavior that would be construed as friendly if carried out by a white male could be viewed even as seductive if carried out by a young female.