Openshift custom env vars not available in Python
You probably just need to stop & start (not restart) your application via the rhc command line so that your python environment can pick them up.
I'm trying to get a Python 2.7, Django 1.7 web gear up and running.
I have hot_deploy activated.
However, after setting my required env vars (via rhc), and I see them set in the gear ('env | grep MY_VAR'  is OK), when running the WSGI script the vars are NOT SET. 
os.environ['MY_VAR'] yields KeyError. Is this somehow related to hot_deploy?