Why is my ENVIRONMENT constant, "development" if my codeigniter app is online?

I just changed the line on index.php to read

PHP Code:

define('ENVIRONMENT', isset($_SERVER['ENVIRONMENT']) ? $_SERVER['ENVIRONMENT'] : 'development'); 


I've had several cases in Apache shared hosting setups where mod_env was not enabled. The following takes care of those
by assuming that if $_SERVER['CI_ENV'] is not set (as it should have been in .htaccess) it's because we're on the live site.

PHP Code:

define('ENVIRONMENT', isset($_SERVER['CI_ENV']) ? $_SERVER['CI_ENV'] : 'production');