Connnie Hedegaard is a Danish politician, journalist, and intellectual. Currently, Hedegaard is the Commissioner for Climate Action in the European Union (EU).

She has held this position since 2010. Prior to this, she served as Denmark's climate and energy minister.

Since taking over her role as the EU's first Climate Action Commissioner, Hedegaard has made it her priority to ensure the Union establishes and follows ambitious climate policy both internationally and at home.

During a recent diplomatic trip to the United States, Hedegaard said governments need to do much more to address climate change:

"We can bail out banks, we can bail out member states, but you cannot bail out climate," she said. "If we just say we must extract all the fossil fuels that we can find in the world, then it's clear that it will not be possible to stay below the 2 degrees. Nobody is doing enough. Europe is not doing enough, the U.S. is not doing enough, China is not doing enough -- all of us will have to do more."

While acting as the Danish climate and energy minister, Hedegaard was a key organizer of the UN's most famous conference on climate change in 2009. She also led the development of Denmark's climate change strategy which has propelled the country to enact one of the most ambitious new energy policies on the planet in 2012.