On my development machine:
$ bundle exec rails console
Loading development environment (Rails 3.2.3)
1.9.3p194 :001 > Rails.env
=> \"development\"
RAILS_ENV is a variable like any other which will always default to development
if you like you can always open up '~/.bash_profile' on the production server and add this:
alias sc="bundle exec rails console production"
then run source ~/.bash_profile to reload that file for your terminal session and you can just call sc to load up console.