Why I'm occupying a gas-fired power station chimney

Thirty people shut down the UK's newest gas-fired power station and 15 occupied two of its chimneys at West Burton in Nottinghamshire this morning. I am one of them. We have set up two camps, one at the top and one inside the 80-metre-high smoke-stacks. We have also carried up enough supplies to keep us up here for at least a week.

It's pretty scary hanging inside the chimney on a portaledge, but we've been rigorously trained and have some very skilled climbers as part of our group. We've made a cosy camp with tarpaulins, and we plan to share a hot meal this evening at the same time as our friends across on the other chimney. The view up here is beautiful. We can see the River Trent and green fields and woods stretching into the distance – marred only by a single gas and three coal power stations. The chimney makes weird noises which jolted everyone awake several times last night but I'm sure we'll get used to it.

Making our home on top of a power station in October may seem like a strange thing to do, but we've thought long and hard about it, and we are here for very serious reasons. We're aware that as we sit here surveying the horizon, the east coast of the US is being devastated by Hurricane Sandy. These two things are inextricably connected.

We're doing this because the gas plant, which is still being constructed by its operator, EDF, is one of the first in a new dash for gas that has to be stopped. The government and the big energy companies want to build as many as 20 new gas power stations, which would leave the UK dependent on this highly polluting and increasingly expensive fuel for decades to come.

Last week EDF hiked its energy prices by 10.8%, the highest rise of any of the big six energy companies so far this winter. These price rises were triggered by the rising wholesale cost of gas, which the UK is increasingly forced to import as North Sea supplies decline. We already rely on gas for83% of our central heating and almost 50% of electricity. Increasing this dependence will cause household energy bills to rise even further, pushing those who live the most precarious lives deeper into fuel poverty.

By occupying the site and halting construction we hope, for however short a time, to stop this dash for gas and expose the madness of a government that is totally in the thrall of the big energy companies. Intense lobbying by some of the most powerful polluters in the world is eroding even the modest gains made by democratic attempts to shape our energy policy, which culminated in the 2008 Climate Change Act. Over the past five years, direct action campaigns have played a key role in forcing government U-turns around major environmental decisions – think of thePlane Stupid campaign against Heathrow's third runway and the shift away from coal after the occupation at Kingsnorth. Now, the government's climate advisers, the independent Committee on Climate Change, arewarning that a dash for gas could be illegal, causing the UK to miss the already relatively unambitious emissions reduction targets laid out in the Climate Change Act. More