I have no objection to static variables and functions, in fact I use them myself, but the fear and disdain of global variables have no place in embedded programming. I have seen so much miserable embedded "C" where hoops were jumped through such as using a function call to pick up the value of a static variable in another module. The "advantage" of auto variables (using less space) is often lost because the resulting code grow in order to do major manipulation to find the address (a global is always an absolute address, a place on the stack is not).