Earthlike worlds within 30 lightyears

Boffin: Earthlike worlds within 30 lightyears of here • The Register.

Alan Boss, of gravitational instability fame, has published a book (The Crowded Universe) claiming, surely as headline catcher, that every sun probably has a habitable planet. Habitable NOT inhabited. Just how long a planet orbitting a Blue Super-giant would last is a moot point as I suspect he means “almost every star”, which means the 99.9% that are Class A or cooler. If so then there’s a hundred billion habitable planets out in our Galaxy alone.

However he’s a “Civilization pessimist” who seems to think Intelligence doesn’t persist long enough for it to cross paths with other Intelligence. That seems kind of futile and lonely to me…