Billionaire investor Jeremy Grantham has made another big prediction. 

After capturing global attention with his ‘super bubble’ call last week, Mr Grantham says he has an even more urgent message.

The renowned investor says the last 25 years have been a “Goldilocks” period, which will soon give way to a future of inflation, slower growth and labour shortages. 

“There’s only a certain amount of cheap oil, cheap nickel, cheap copper, and we are beginning to hit some of those boundaries,” Mr Grantham, co-founder of Boston asset manager GMO, told Bloomberg reporters this week. 

“Climate change is coming with heavy floods, serious droughts and higher temperatures -- none of these make farming easier. So, we’re going to live in a world of bottlenecks and shortages and price spikes everywhere.”

Raw materials are becoming more scarce, baby boomers are retiring, birth rates are dropping, formerly emerging markets are getting old, and geopolitical tensions are flaring.

Mr Grantham says humanity has a tendency to live beyond its means, and has indulged in easy money - driving up asset prices, exacerbating inequality, creating economic stresses and societal fragmentation.

He says the growth of the past century has left soils depleted, ecosystems poisoned and a changing climate; wiping out wildlife, putting biodiversity in jeopardy and slowing human reproductivity.

“We have simply shot way beyond the long-term capacity of the planet to deal with us,” said Mr Grantham. 

“Nature is beginning to fail. And in the end, if we don’t fix that, we begin to fail as well.”