The irony here is that instead of just unsetting the alias that is proxying `ls` to `ls --color=auto` the solution was to leave the coloring in place but try and hack the override env var for defeating that behavior.

ie, `var foo = 1 + 1 - 1` instead of `var foo = 1`

Wouldn't it have been more straightforward to open one's .bashrc/.bash_profile and remove the alias?