The gist seems to be that it's easy to accidentally leak environment variables (which is why I think the top comment is off-base). tptacek, do you think this risk is overblown?
It's good to be aware of the fact that environments are inherited by child processes (as are file descriptors), but I don't think that's a good reason to avoid using the environment.
The gist seems to be that it's easy to accidentally leak environment variables (which is why I think the top comment is off-base). tptacek, do you think this risk is overblown?