That is correct I copied it. I had a few choices:

1) duplicate the code (nasty), but I remember hearing we might want to move python-rhsm into subman tree which would then mean we could consolidate. 
2) move subman's utils.py to python-rhsm, and change subman to use that. That is certainly nicer but I didn't want to redo all of that work, lazy excuse.
3) don't bother supporting the env variable in python-rhsm and let applications deal with it themselves.

I will do whatever folks think is best.