I'm not at all convinced that this is a victory for common sense, more like a "stealth killing".

"Under a proposed "traffic light" control system, a "red light" would be triggered by any tremor measuring 0.5 local magnitude or higher, meaning fracking should stop and safety procedures such as allowing water to flow back to the surface should be carried out."

According to the Richter scale an earth tremor of less than 2 is described as "micro", "not felt" and "continual".

Hence fracking will be hamstrung by background tremors.

Marvellous!