In a recent mock trial held at Paris, ExxonMobil was charged with blackmailing, deception and public manipulation. The trial coincided with the ongoing international talks on climate change at COP21.

The trial was headed by US environmentalist Bill McKibben and Canadian author Naomi Klein. The court was presided by indigenous and environmental activists who weighed the evidence of the oil-and-gas multinationals alleged ‘climate crimes’.

The event, ‘Exxon v. the People’, stressed ExxonMobil’s court action by a New York state attorney that started last month. The attorney investigated the company’s alleged illegal spreading of global warming denial for decades against state investor laws that prohibit firms from deliberately misleading the public.

“The company's recent legal troubles have become the central environmental campaign of our time—an attempt to make Exxon accountable, and by extension to make it clear that the fossil fuel industry stands in the way of real progress”, McKibben told National Observer.

Several witnesses from all over the world, who are in Paris to attend the global COP21 UN summit on climate change, showed up during the mock trial of ExxonMobil.

Nigerian activist Ken Henshaw said, “If you drive [into the Niger Delta], the past time now is burials. What you see everywhere are posters announcing this burial, or that burial. Life expectancy is between 43 and 46, I’m afraid. I’m really getting scared”.

Henshaw also described how ExxonMobil's West African gas operations allow enormous amount of gas emission. He also highlighted that a high amount of benzene has been found in the water supply, which is 900 times higher than the recommended limit.