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Former head of ExxonMobil and Donald Trump's former secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, has given evidence at a trial in New York City.

Mr Tillerson is the star witness in a securities fraud case brought against Exxon by New York state attorney general's office.

Exxon has been accused of misleading investors over how it was accounting for the financial risks posed by climate change.

Government lawyers today attempted to portray Mr Tillerson as the man who presided over a corporate attempt to cook the books in order to protect billions of dollars of investment in fossil fuel extraction projects and, in essence, make it cheaper to pollute.

It was a fascinating morning, where oil, money, politics and power collided in a small stuffy courtroom in downtown Manhattan.

Mr Tillerson, with a light tan and a sharp suit, oozed the kind of confidence that comes with wealth, power and very expensive lawyers.

He denied the accusations against his former company, his attorney suggesting that the government's case is as a result of state lawyers failing to understand how it predicted risk and cost.

But Mr Tillerson also seemed aware that the court of public opinion is almost as important as the justice system and used his moment on the stand to paint a totally different picture of Exxon.

He was asked a series of questions designed to allow him to describe his support of a carbon tax in the US, his enthusiasm about the Paris climate accords, the seriousness with which he took the science of climate change, and Exxon's endeavours to make lower emission fuels and products.

It was an example of a much wider shift - of an industry scrambling to reframe itself as "good guys" who can use their colossal resources to be a part of the solution.

In some ways this is a savvy thing to do.

Fossil fuels have literally fuelled our world since the industrial revolution, driving growth and development.

But they are becoming increasingly unpopular in the mind of the public and with those governments who are working to decarbonise energy.

They are also under pressure via competition from renewables.

Mr Tillerson's words will ring hollow though, I think.

No matter the spin, Exxon is one of the world's largest oil and gas companies and one of its biggest corporate polluters.

It has been accused of not only understanding the science of climate change decades ago, but embarking on a very sophisticated and successful crusade to lobby for deregulation and to sow doubt in the minds of the public and policymakers about the accuracy of the very climate science they claim to have grasped so completely.

Mr Tillerson's biggest slip came at the very end of his testimony when he seemed to reserve his only outpouring of regret for the workers of Exxon.

"What I do feel badly about .. is the men and women at the ExxonMobil Corporation," he said.

"They've been accused of fraud as well and it's not fair to them. They have always operated at the highest levels of integrity."

Referring to the structures he put in place to account for climate change, he said: "Maybe we should have stuck our head in the sand and gone about our business... but it wasn't the right thing to do."

For campaigners and activists who contend that Rex Tillerson wouldn't have the first idea of the right thing to do, that will be hard to hear.

More importantly his words will probably have the effect of continuing to drive a broader attempt to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for their contribution to the climate crisis.

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